a breathless justice system

The files are piling up, the deadlines are lengthening, penalizing the litigants and despairing the magistrates, exhausted. At the Nantes Courthouse (Loire-Atlantique), Thibaut Lepine, a family affairs judge, does a lot of hard work to mop up his pile of cases. But despite a formidable efficiency, he and his team are falling behind: “We cannot do more, we are at the maximum. You can’t help but experience it as a personal failure. We tell ourselves that the job we want to do, we did not do as well as it should have. “ And even bringing files home to work in the evening is not enough to make up for this delay.

Symbol of this embolism: a dedicated room where 230 cases sleep, ready to be judged. And these are serious issues: sexual assault, violence against minors, particularly complex scams … And for lack of magistrates, these files, opened in 2015, still do not have a trial date. Arnaud Baron, coordinating magistrate at theaudaciously, regrets having to make choices: “We are the arbiter of pain, it is something unbearable. “ Well aware of the problem, these heads of jurisdiction have made it a priority and are asking the state for additional magistrates. Without success.