From November 6 to 15, 2023, the unprecedented trial of a minister in office before the Courtof Justice of the Republic (CJR) will have been marked by the paradoxical omnipresence of communication in the historic courtroom of the Paris Courtof Justice. Testimony...
When the doors of the room of the first civil chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal open, she bursts in. When the audience enters, she grabs them. It oozes from the walls and benches. Communication is everywhere.
Visual communication
An almost unreal scene: usually a guest of honor in this prestigious room, the Minister of Justice sits on the defendants' bench. To her right, two clerks and five deputies. To his left, the two representatives of the Public Prosecutor's Office and then five senators. At the end of these two rows of seats presides a senator, three professional magistrates and a deputy. Each rank is doubled, at the back, by that of the substitutes. The president sits eight meters away from Éric Dupond-Moretti... The overwhelming image: from his place there, the minister faces 30 magistrates.
Five meters higher, the press is installed on the mezzanine. During the recesses of the hearing, the minister leaves the room through a back door on the left while the journalists leave through the one on the right. No exchange. The defence lawyers refused to comment, as did the prosecutor general. Civil parties are not admitted before the CJR, depriving the witnesses' lawyers of the right to speak. The judicial chronicle is king: journalists report on the hearing, decipher the innuendos, mock the off-the-record communication denounced by the parties, remembering that they too had benefited from remarks made under the covers. The official communication is nowhere, the communication, everywhere...
Insider communication
This hearing brings together actors who are called upon to rub shoulders on a daily basis in a high magistracy group denounced in his time by the minister but in which he now participates. Directors of central administrations testify for or against their minister less than a meter from him. The public prosecutor shall make a complaint against the person who appointed him. Magistrates are speaking as witnesses after being implicated by their minister. The word is policed, the anger is muted. All of them work under the authority of the defendant for a day, not knowing if he will remain their leader. The orality of the debates necessarily takes a particular turn. Each of the initiates, starting with the specialized press, decodes each supposed sweetness that is ultimately murderous, such a deceitful adjective when you know how to read it between the lines. Suppressed hatred, bitter taste: no one seems to be in their place.
Communication quickly swept away
The composition of the Court of Justice of the Republic itself will be contested, with parliamentarians temporarily taking on the role of magistrates. Does the clothes make the monk? This question will hover until the deliberation and will rebound on the eve of its pronouncement on November 29. Because, already, the rumour of the acquittal is circulating in the corridors of the courthouse, which is used to respecting secrecy. The debate on the very existence of the CJR, as old as it is (thirty years), is revived, the communication is unleashed: "clemency for elected officials", "denial of democracy", "jurisdiction of the self". Then, once the door of this decidedly historic room is closed, everyone will resume their role. And silence will return.