, formerly a French investigative judge
Precursors Until the development of the
Medieval Inquisition in the 12th century, the legal systems used in medieval Europe generally relied on the
adversarial system to determine whether someone should be tried and whether a person was guilty or innocent. Beginning in 1198, Pope Innocent III issued a series of decretals that reformed the ecclesiastical court system, empowering ecclesiastical courts to summon and interrogate witnesses on their own initiative. This was confirmed by the
Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. As a result, in parts of continental Europe, the ecclesiastical courts operating under the inquisitional procedure became the dominant method by which disputes were adjudicated. In France, the — lay courts — also employed inquisitorial proceedings.
Origins In France, the investigative judge has been a feature of the judicial system since the mid-19th century, and the preliminary investigative procedure has been a part of the judicial system from at least the 17th century. The sweeping powers traditionally entrusted to the investigating judge were so broad that
Honoré de Balzac called the investigating judge "the most powerful man in France" in the 19th century. In a celebrated although exaggerated passage, Balzac wrote that "No human authority, neither
the king nor the minister of justice nor the prime minister can intrude on the power of the investigating judge, no one can stop him, nobody gives him orders. He is sovereign, obeying only his conscience and the law."
Reforms Later, however, the authority of the investigating judges in France was diminished by a series of reforms. In 1985, French justice minister
Robert Badinter proposed limiting the investigating judge's role in making custody decisions; 's successor,
Albin Chalandon made the same proposal two years later. In 1990, Justice Minister
Pierre Arpaillange convened a Human Rights Commission (''''), led by the legal scholar
Mireille Delmas-Marty. The commission concluded that
France's criminal procedure code violated human rights standards, noting that the investigating judge combined investigative and judicial powers in a single person. The commission proposed a package of
due process reforms, including the abolition of the post of investigating judge and the creation of a "liberty judge" ('''') in its place. Under the proposed system, the prosecutor and the police would have sole responsibility for conducting the investigation, and the liberty judge would be charged with overseeing pre-trial investigations. This proposal prompted an outcry from the conservative judiciary, as well as from scholars and the media; "in the context of repeated investigations of
Socialist Party officials, the proposition appeared self-interested." Less extensive reforms were adopted instead; legislation that became effective in 1994 provided a
right to counsel for persons in police custody (''''), and also transferred the decision on bail and
pretrial detention "to a team of magistrates not involved in the particular case." Almost immediately, however, opponents of the reforms mobilized, upset with the substantial changes to historic French practice; several magistrates resigned in protest. The new minister of justice,
Pierre Méhaignerie, pledged repeal. The reforms were reversed in August 1993, when a new law repealed the right to have counsel at the beginning of police detention (but retained the right to have counsel after 20 hours of detention); restored "the powers of the 'solitary' investigating judge involved in the case to bail or remand"; and again restricted the accused's access to the investigative dossier. Reforms resumed in 2000, with the enactment of the
Guigou Law. This followed the report of the
Truche Commission and a proposal to revise the French code of criminal procedure by . Among other reforms, the 2000 law abolished the power of the investigating judge to remand defendants into custody and created a new specialized judicial officer, the judge of liberty and custody ('''') to make these determinations. Renewed calls for further reform to abolish or diminish the powers of the French investigating judge intensified after a series of botched investigations, including what became known as the
Outreau scandal. In that case, more than a dozen people near
Boulogne were wrongfully imprisoned (and about half
wrongfully convicted) on
false charges of child abuse after a flawed investigation by an inexperienced judge. In 2009 and 2010, President
Nicolas Sarkozy unsuccessfully attempted to abolish the post of investigating judge as part of a broader package of legal reforms. == Duties and procedure ==