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La procédure applicable en matière de Protection de la jeunesse soulève parfois des interrogations. Elle est régie par des dispositions qui se trouvent en partie dans la Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse et en partie au Code de procédure civile. On y trouve des éléments inspirés du régime contradictoire, d'autres du régime inquisitoire et même quelques emprunts à la procédure pénale. Ceci dit, ce processus judiciaire répond-il adéquatement et de façon cohérente aux objectifs de la Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse? Cet exposé offre des éléments de réponse en décrivant les principales étapes de l'instance où il apparaît que tantôt l'un et tantôt l'autre des régimes procéduraux mentionnés prévalent en fonction de l'objet particulier de chacune des phases du processus. ; Abstract: Procedural matters relating to youth protection raise a number of difficulties due to the various legislative sources which pertain thereto. These procedural aspects are governed by provisions found in the Youth Protection Act as well as in the Code of Civil Procedure. Some of these aspects appear to follow a more traditional adversarial approach while others seem closer to an inquisitorial model. In certain cases, the influence of the law relating to criminal procedure is evident. Does such a judicial process adequately and coherently fulfill the aims of the Youth Protection Act? The goal of the paper is to answer this query by examining the principle stages of the trial process in light of the procedural influences most prevalent at each step.

Justice and Knowledge : Expert Appraisal in the Forming of the Judgement.
Although reduced to a common place in legal parlance, expert witnesses play an important role in the judicial decision-making process. Expert reports provide not only sources of ideas and arguments for the actors in the judicial scene, but help to establish certainties and may be viewed as a resource or a constraint and be decisive in the pronouncement of a judgement. Legal efforts to maintain the dominance of the law are not sufficient to abate the evolution of ways of judging and the grounds of a decision. In this interplay usually regulated by law, rival principles of action endanger the traditional force of law, bringing into question the role and scope of legal settlement.

The issue of extending the right to submit a case to the Constitutional Council should be raised again in view of the increasingly contentious status of the law in the French judicial system. Indeed the immunity of an act of parliament has vanished since ordinary judges have been granted the power to prevent its implementation in case of opposition with an international rule. In addition, this control of international compatibility looks very much like a process of judicial review since it fundamentally sanctions the respect of similar norms. Therefore, the main question is no longer, in absolute terms, whether citizens should be granted the right to submit a case to the Constitutional council, but rather to determine if, why, and under which conditions such a reform would be best suited to give back to the jurisdictional control of the law the consistency it no longer has today. Adapted from the source document.

The political elite has found in the appeal to the Constitutional Council a new resource in the political struggle and the criticisms it wages at the institution no longer, as in the past, aim to suppress it but rather to stigmatize its jurisdictional "shortcomings". As for the media, they tend to use judicial review to give more objectivity to their assessment of the policy-making process and also, thanks to opinion polls, of constitutional issues. Adapted from the source document.

States, Criminal Justice and History : a review and some Perspectives.
In the past 30 years, research on the State has followed various paraïlel paths. Beside Works of legal sociology, philos ophy and anthropology, a history of crime and criminal justice and a history of State formation have developped separately. This article attempts to assess the state of knowledge within these latter perspectives. In the course of the development of crime and criminal justice history the interest of historians has shifted from criminal behaviour to judicial institutions, and more recently to their political dimension.
On the other hand, social historians interested in the formation of modem States have neglected the role played by criminal justice in the process of State modernisation. Built on this dual approach (crime and criminal justice and history of State), the paper proposes a reading of the development of criminal justice and state power in Western Europe from the Middle-Age to the 20th Century. From this perspective there has been a progressive transition from a local judicial system controlled by citizens to one controlled by the prince, as an instrument of monarchie sovereignity, and then to a bureaucratie State judicial system. This transition has taken various forms depending on the type of political and territorial structure involved. Criminal justice is thus seen as a crucial aspect of modem State formation.

The Bailiff and the Compulsory Enforcement of Rulings in Civil Matters : An Empirical Reconstruction of the « Pyramid of Enforcement » in Flanders.
The compulsory enforcement of civil rulings follows a distinct number of successive steps stipulated by the Judicial Code and is meant to increase the pressure on the debtor. For this study, 23 bailiffs provided us with 276 cases of compulsory enforcement. The resulting « pyramid of enforcement » offers a quantitative assessment of the flow and fall-out of cases throughout the process of compulsory enforcement. Furthermore, the configurations of the parties involved reveal different modes of enforcement.

Transformation of the East German Administration : From a Unitary Socialist State Towards Federal and Municipal Democracy
The transformation of the administration of 'actually existing socialism' in the DDR into a classic European-type administration is a complex process. The Union Treaty of August 1990 sets in a very pragmatic manner the principles governing the harmonization of the judicial systems, the introduction of a career public service, and the reorganization of administrative services. However, the establishment of efficient administrations at the level of the five new Länder, as well as in the administrative districts and municipalities has been hampered by the particularly severe financial crisis.

French Administration and Europe : the Example of Police and Judicial coopération ; The third pillar of the Treaty on European Union is dedicated to co-operation in justice and home affairs. Before the Treaty of Amsterdam, the decision-making process within this third pillar remained at intergovemmental level. In negotiations preeminence was given to representatives of the ministries of justice and home affairs to the detriment of those departments concemed with social affairs. The Foreign Office has been called upon to play an increasing role but the balance of its achievements is mitigated. In order to limit the number of conflicts arising between the different ministries, the role of the SGCI, an inter-ministerial body charged with administrative co-ordination of Community policies, has been reinforced.

Is the enlargement of the European Union equivalent to the unification of Europe? The decision to follow the classical model of enlargement to the East is a choice that has privileged the exportation of judicial and economic norms at the expense of the "democratic moment" of the immediate aftermath of 1989. The article analyzes the causes and consequences of such a choice around three themes: (1) It is the outcome of the post-communist transition that has determined the possibilities of integration into the EU and consequently redrawn the political map of Europe; (2) Through the enlargement procedure the EU has become, subsequently, both a model, a constraint and a source of legitimacy for the political elites participating to the process of change in Eastern Europe; (3) The enlarged EU can be seen as a "security community", its periphery being stabilized by the very process of cooptation to the center. Adapted from the source document.

In 1993/94, six workshops on deregulation implementation in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, and Benin were organized. These workshops were off-shots from the "Roundtable on Foreign Direct Investment Policies in Africa" that MIGA had organized on an Africa-wide basis in Gaborone, in 1992. The objective was to bring together high level civil servants with representatives from the private sector (domestic as well as foreign) and with high level civil servants from developing countries that had a successful experience in attracting foreign direct investment. This report reflects the opinions and positions of the participants, discussing twelve specific issues: government attitudes and behavior, civil service mentality and attitude, investment approval process, land ownership issues, financing of investment projects, taxation, expatriate work permits, price controls, customs and port operations, foreign trade formalities, foreign exchange controls and formalities, and legal and judicial systems. (DÜI-Hff)