Performance-Based Budgeting and Management of Judicial Courts in France: an Assessment

The efficiency of civil justice has become a central issue in several communities, including national states that have undertaken to reform their civil procedures rules and/or to implement methods of case management (such as the USA and United Kingdom)and international organizations such as the Council of Europe and the World Bank. Of course, there has always also been interest on the part of legal academics and judicial/court administration professionals.

Court systems have two aspects: on one side, as public institutions, their funding, the recruitment of judges and clerks and employees, the procedural rules they must comply with, are determined by the state. On the other side, as organizations producing dispute resolution services, their operation and management are borne by the chiefs of courts. The importance of capacity management of the former, who are most often judges, is now acknowledged by most specialists, even if the compatibility between legal rationality and managerial rationality is questioned by some of them. This article seeks to explain the situation of French courts, focusing on court administration that can not be addressed without taking account of the broader framework of State policy concerning most specifically the budget-setting process which has undergone recent radical reforms.