The IMF boss and front-runner to be the French Socialist Party’s presidential candidate next year, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been refused bail by a court in New York, according to the BBC. As has been widely reported he’s facing a […]

It used to be common in England to suggest that criminal justice was better in France or in Scotland. Well, each is another country, and they do things differently there. I’ve absolutely no doubt some of their laws are better. […]

This week the French National Assembly has finally been debating the government’s proposed legislation banning the wearing of the “full face veil” – the niqab, burka or any other piece of clothing that hides the face. I wrote in […]

I’m glad to say Rachida Dati is in the news again on the other side of the water. The Telegraph reports a claim that Nicolas Sarkozy suspects her of being the source of the recent rumours about his marriage; […]

While the British government bans Islamist groups, it looks very much as though some kind of ban is going to be imposed in France on being completely veiled – wearing the niqab, chador and burka – in public. A

Oh no! She’s going! Not quite yet, but the French justice minister Rachida Dati will leave Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in a matter of weeks in order to run in the European elections. She’s being reshuffled out, basically. Shame. She […]

A hot week for legal news from France. First, if you remember the controversy over the annulment of the marriage of a couple from Lille – on the grounds that the wife had lied about being a virgin – […]

David Pannick’s Times column today is about the most famous French advocate of the age, Jacques Vergès, a repellent yet compelling figure whose political extremism and cynicism make radical British lawyers look like naive lackeys of the establishment.

It’s a good story, and I agree with Simon Jenkins about the connected problems of police ineffectiveness and lack of traditional social restraints in Britain. No doubt the story is true, and perhaps things are better in France. But […]

The other French story concerns Sarko’s legal axewoman Rachida Dati, the very sexy but somewhat dangerous minister of justice. She’s got herself into trouble by initially defending the judgment of a court in Lille, which granted annulment of a […]