These wise words should be very helpful for all of us who have puzzled over finding and/or citing cases from the Conseil d’Etat of France. Stéphane Cottin of the Cabinet of the General Secretary of the French Government replied thus to an American query [hence the reference to the Blue Book – think OSCOLA instead], and concludes with instructions as to what to do when a decision is only available online.
“I’m sorry, but in France (and I think it’s a pity) there is no “official” way to cite a caselaw (or other legal text). I know the rule imposed by the Blue book, but, for this case, it will be impossible, because this [decision of June 2008], as you can see on the official portal of the dissemination of the French law on the Internet will be only “Mentionné dans les tables du recueil Lebon,” or only cited in the yearly index.
Actually, each year, the Conseil d’Etat sort its caselaws into three parts :
– the most important ones (10 %) (or type A) will be published in full text in the recueil Lebon, with a page number (a Recueil Lebon is published in 6 parts (2 months by 2 months) almost one year later …
– a second part (type B, approx. 15 %) will be only summarized and put into an analytical index (tables) of caselaw, published with the last issue of the year of the Recueil Lebon
– a third part (type C, the other 75%), will not be published on paper, but only on legifrance.
In my opinion, you could use this form of citation CE, SSR, Jun. 27, 2008, Mme Faiza A., req. n° 286798, available at http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriAdmin.do?idTexte=CETATEXT000019081211 (last visited April 4, 2009)
(SSR = sous sections réunies (here 2ème et 7ème sous-sections réunies ), and not Sect. (section) which is the second type of formation, just after the most important one : the Assemblée) (Faiza A., and not M. because of the official anonymisation process, which obliged to use the alphabetical order for the anonymisation of the names).”
