► Full Reference: Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC), Centre de recherche sur la justice et le règlement des conflits (CRJ) and Centre de recherche en économie (CRED) of University Paris Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), Compliance: Obligation, devoir, pouvoir, culture, ("Compliance: obligation, duty, power, culture"), Salle des Conseils, University Panthéon-Assas, Place du Panthéon, 12, Paris, June 13 & 14, 2023.
To registrer for a physical presence: anouk.leguillou@mafr.fr (the number of places is limited, you will be asked to confirm 48 hours before). To register for a online presence: ClickHERE
🧮The event takes place in the buildings Salle des Conseils of the Panthéon-Assas University (Paris II), Place du Panthéon, 12, 75005 Paris, on 14 June 2023 from 9:00 to 18:30.
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► Presentation of the theme: "The "Obligation" is at the heart of many disciplines. Compliance techniques very often take the form of obligations. But to mention only the first questions that come to mind and in cases, especially those that are referred to the courts, it is paradoxically not so much Contract Law and Tort Law that have been used, since Compliance Law is on the one hand often assimilated to the mass of applicable regulations and its unilaterality characteristic of Regulatory Law, the branch of Law that Compliance Law extends, and on the other hand it is often associated with ethics, morality, a shared culture, everything that seems to distance it from Obligation.
The notions of "duty" and "commitment" are increasingly taking their place in Compliance Law, although their scope is still uncertain. This is why, beyond the multiplicity of "compliance obligations", one may ask whether there is an "obligation to comply", what its definition would be and its relationship with everything that, in Compliance Law, is not one obligation.
It is the topic of this conference and the articles that will follow to identify what will be this hypothesis, which is becoming more and more frequent and could become the standard.
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Method chosen to deal with the topic: For contributing to what will later become the book on the Compliance Obligation, constituting its first chapter aimed at identifying what could be a definition of Compliance Obligation, the method is not to start from the legal instruments of compliance but rather for each of the contributors to draw on their discipline, which they has mastered technically, in order to project it and formulate what, on the basis of this previous mastery and according to his or her own conception, is or should be, or should not be, the Compliance Obligation.
Each speaker gives a half-hour presentation on his topic, which is followed by a 15-minute debate.
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The proceedings of this colloquium will form the basis of the first chapter in the books:
🎤Gilles Lhuilier, professor at the ENS of Rennes, director of the department Droit, Economie, Gestion
🎤Etienne Maclouf, professor of gestion at the Panthéon-Assas University (Paris II)
🎤Stéphane Mouton, professor of Law at the Toulouse 1-Capitole University
🎤Jean-Baptiste Racine, professor of Law at the Panthéon-Assas University (Paris II)
🎤René Sève, director of the Association française de philosophie du droit - AFPD and of the Archives de Philosophie du Droit - APD
🎤Marta Torre-Schaub, director of research at the CNRS,Institute of legal and philosophical sciences of the Sorbonne, University Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I)
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🔻 read a detailed presentation of the manifestation below:
Full reference: Information Note From the European Commission to the Permanent Representatives Committee About the Progress on Combatting Hate Speech Online Through the EU Code of Conduct, Council of the European Union, 27th of September 2019, 7p.
🧮The event will take place at Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris I) on 15 October 2026.
Il will be held in French.
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Presentation of the topic: While Contract Law, in its common rules expressed by the "general theory of contracts", is often considered to be the most developed branch of Law in practice and the most studied at university, at first glance it seems to be given little consideration when it comes to compliance matter.
This is undoubtedly due to the fact that the company, which is at the heart of the action expected of it—action that is expected to be powerful (since it affects the collective future) and diversified (since it concerns all systems beyond the company's direct activity)—seems above all to have the status of a subject of law. This is exacerbated if, by mistakenly confusing the latter terms, we only talk about "conformity" and assert that it is simply for businesses a matter of "complying with the regulations that apply to them", which then leaves little room for contractual initiative. This would be associated only with Ethics, a normative order that also differs from a contract, which is a binding legal act.
The relationship between Contract and many sorts of documents, standards and ethical acts that are so numerous in compliance techniques, to which we can add the soft law produced by courts, regulators, supervisors and the companies themselves, is therefore an open question. This delicate reconciliation, which the terms "CSR" and "Governance" express without referring to very precise legal definitions, can cause difficulties in relation to general Contract Law: thus, the "commitments" that punctuate the techniques and behaviours that make up the "culture of compliance" have a central place in Compliance Law. However, their place, if not their equivalence with the contract, is not established, and may even be excluded. This too is an open question.
Based on these initial questions, it appears that in order to gain a firmer footing in the analysis of the practices of companies that include compliance clauses into multiple contracts, we must observe that compliance may consist of a comprehensive service that is the very subject of a specific contract, the "compliance contract, or even assist in the conception that judges may, or must, develop in their office when they are seized of "contractual litigation involving Compliance", we must return to common contract law.
Indeed, if we stop viewing Compliance Law solely through the prism of punishment, if we do not limit it to the "detection and prevention" of fraudulent behaviour which, if it occurred, would be punished, the contract does not have the same place in practice. In this initial restrictive conception of Compliance Law based on sanctions, simply by moving from ex post to ex ante, the company remains subject to the regulations that apply to it, and the contract would be just one of the ways in which it fulfils its legal compliance obligation.
However, the obligation of compliance can also be considered to have its legitimate source in the Contract, which in general termes is based on the autonomy of will and all its consequences (contractual freedom, binding force, effect on third parties, etc.), with the Principle of Compliance fitting into it as a second pillar linked to the first pillar, which is the Principle of free Competition.
It is therefore very useful to better understand practices by comparing the technical principles of general Contract Law with Compliance Principles, such as concern for others that contractors may pursue independently of any regulatory requirement (these others who are distant in space and time), preservation of systems, the obligation to provide evidence, etc.
This is the subject of this symposium which, according to the classic dichotomy of contractual formation and contractual execution, revisits the contractual thread based on the founding principles of autonomy and freedoms, binding force and its relativity, the meeting of consents, groups of contracts, and regulatory contracts often drawn up to implement compliance policies. Enforcement and contractual liability under general Contract Law are themselves coloured in a unique way when a compliance concern or goal has been included in the contract or is implied by it.
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Speakers include:
🎤 Nicolas Bargue professor at Panthéon-Sorbonne University,
🎤 Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, university professor, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and the European School of Regulation and Compliance (EeRC)
🎤 Julia Heinich, professor at Panthéon-Sorbonne University
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The proceedings of this symposium will form the basis of a specific chapter in the following publications:
Julie Dona is a law clerk at Allen & Overy’s New York office. She holds a juris doctor from the New York University School of Law and a master in public affairs from Princeton University. (...)
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Complete reference: KOVAR, Jean-Philippe and LASERRE CAPDEVILLE, Jérôme, Droit de la régulation bancaire (Banking regulatory Law), preface by Christian Noyer, RB Éditions, 333 p.
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Alain Couret is a Doctor of Law and a professeur agrégé des Universités. He is a professor at the Sorbonne Law School, where he teaches corporate law and financial markets law. (...)
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