Should we leave the rule of law?

There are controversies we thought we would never have, causes we hoped we would never have to defend. And yet here we are : debate about, perhaps, dispensing with the rule of law. It all starts, of course, with the abject murder of little Lola, which shocked the whole of France.

In this emotion, certain words were released, in particular that of Cyril Hanouna, on his C8 set on October 22. : “I said, and I say it again, for this kind of people the trial must be done immediately, in a few hours and over : it is direct perpetuity. We can’t stand this legal laxity and what is happening now. It will still last for months and months, she will have a lawyer, she will be able to defend herself, they will plead irresponsibility, and it will start again. There will be yet another problem.”

An expeditious justice, with presumption of guilt, without the possibility of defending oneself or calling on a lawyer : this is what Cyril Hanouna calls for. We could say that this position of a TV host is anecdotal, but alas no ! On the one hand, because it has been viewed several million times on social networks, until it provoked a reaction from the Keeper of the Seals himself. And then because the Lola affair was followed by other miscellaneous events, in turn very publicized, in particular the case of this father, in the city of Roanne, who decided to take justice into his own hands by thrashing his daughter’s suspected attacker.

And this is how, gradually, serenely, a debate took hold on certain television sets and in the columns of certain newspapers : why don’t we end the rule of law ?

Two things. A State governed by the rule of law is, on the one hand, a State which agrees to submit to the standards which it enacts – that is to say whose decisions are not arbitrary. On the other hand, a rule of law is a state that respects the fundamental rights of its inhabitants. Among which the right to impartial and adversarial justice. And this is obviously nothing out of the ordinary.

The rule of law is nothing less than the second pillar of democracy, along with popular sovereignty. If you abdicate the rule of law, democracy ceases to be a democracy : it is nothing more than an authoritarian regime, in which individuals can be repressed and minorities discriminated against. The next step has a name : fascism.

Certainly, those who question the rule of law do not do so in its entirety, but only for the most atrocious crimes. The problem is that when it comes to fundamental freedoms, there is a “ratchet effect”. To say it quickly : from the moment we accept the principle of compromising on a fundamental freedom, even in an exceptional way, it is very difficult to go back. Conversely, it is very easy to gradually extend the exceptions. If we accepted the principle of speedy justice today in the case of child murders, why would we not accept it tomorrow when it comes to charges of high treason, for example, or terrorism, or ecoterrorism ? And why not for an unauthorized demonstration ? And There you go : you have it, the slippery slope towards an authoritarian, even fascist state.

I would add that departing from the rule of law, rejecting the control of the Constitutional Council or the European Court of Human Rights, has been the obsession for many years of Éric Zemmour and, more generally, of part of the French nationalist right.

Never. None. And, since some like to use history in the service of their political analyses… What do we celebrate each year on July 14, National Day ? We celebrate the storming of the Bastille by the Parisian revolutionaries. What was the Bastille ? The symbol of monarchical arbitrariness. A prison in which anyone could be sent by order of the king, without any trial. The birth certificate of our Republic is the day when the people stood up against the arbitrariness of political power.

Our fundamental freedoms are our most precious asset. Nothing should ever justify thinking about amputating it.