★ Must-know
📌 Objective law authorizes the exercise of subjective rights, so the two notions are complementary rather than opposed.
Further detail
Positive law is the set of rules in force in a State at a given time.
The normative stock is the collection of legislative articles and texts composing law in force, and it had exceeded 35,000 articles and 2,000 directives according to the course.
Legal verbs are associated with the following acts:
Droit objectif = rules; droit subjectif = powers granted by those rules.
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Moral rules arise from individual or collective conscience, whereas legal rules are created by societies to organize them and are backed by public sanctions.
Article 6 of the Civil Code provides that private agreements cannot derogate from laws concerning public order or good morals.
Continental or Romano-Germanic law is primarily written, codified, and legislative, whereas Common Law is primarily jurisprudential and based on precedents.
Further detail
📌 Rules of propriety concern external social behavior and, like moral rules, are generally not sanctioned by law.
Continental law starts from written rules, whereas Common Law starts from decided cases.
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📌 Natural-law theory holds that superior principles derived from nature, reason, or the divine constrain positive law, whereas positivism recognizes positive law independently of whether it is just.
📌 State positivism grounds law in the State and its hierarchy of norms, whereas sociological positivism grounds law in social facts, customs, and collective consciousness.
Further detail
Natural law asks whether positive law is just; positivism asks whether it is socially established.
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A general rule applies impersonally to all persons in a defined situation, whereas an individual administrative measure is addressed nominatively to particular persons.
A supplementary law applies when the parties have not expressed a contrary intention, whereas an imperative law applies without derogation except where the law permits an exception.
A legal rule is enforceable through public authority, and individuals must use the judicial system rather than administer justice themselves.
Further detail
📌 In criminal law, sanction generally means a punishment imposed for an offence, whereas in civil law it generally means compensation for harm suffered.
Generality and obligation lead to public enforcement and legal security.
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📌 The syllogism applies a rule through major premise, minor premise, and conclusion, whereas a paralogism has the appearance of rigorous reasoning but leads to a false conclusion.
Further detail
📌 Deduction proceeds from the general to the particular, whereas induction derives a general principle from particular rules or cases.
Facts → qualification → applicable rule → legal conclusion.
📌 Treatises study a legal subject in depth, textbooks have a pedagogical purpose, and précis provide a more concise presentation.
Official publications state and organize the law; private publishers explain and synthesize it.
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Private law governs relationships between individuals, whereas public law organizes the State and public authorities and governs their relationships with individuals.
Public law pursues the general interest and organizes the exercise of public authority, whereas private law orders social life and protects individual interests.
French dual jurisdiction distinguishes the judicial order, headed by the Court of Cassation and generally competent for private law, from the administrative order, headed by the Council of State and generally competent for public law.
A court of appeal reviews both facts and law, whereas the Court of Cassation reviews only whether the law was correctly applied and does not retry the facts.
Further detail
📌 Cassation for lack of legal basis occurs when the court of appeal has not sufficiently characterized the facts in relation to the applicable legal rule, whereas cassation for violation of the law sanctions an incorrect application of the law.
Private law protects individual interests, whereas public law organizes public power and serves the general interest.
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📌 Constitutional review may be a priori, before promulgation of a law, or a posteriori through a priority question of constitutionality, available since 2010 for a law already in force.
Further detail
Civil law develops into commercial law and specialized branches; public law divides into constitutional, administrative, international, fiscal, and liberty law.
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📌 Labour law governs relationships between private employers and employees, whereas social security law governs relationships between insured persons and social security bodies.
Further detail
Specialization blurs the private-public boundary, creating mixed fields such as criminal, social, European, rural, insurance, and environmental law.
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For an international treaty to apply in France, it must be ratified, satisfy reciprocity, and be published in the Journal officiel; when its provisions are clear, precise, and unconditional, individuals may invoke it before courts.
European Union regulations are generally binding and directly applicable in every Member State, whereas directives bind states as to the objectives to achieve and require national transposition.
Under Article 38 of the Constitution, a classic ordinance is adopted by the Government after parliamentary authorization and initially has regulatory value before ratification can give it legislative value.
The legality of regulations may be challenged by an action seeking review, whereas an exception of illegality merely excludes the unlawful act from application in the pending dispute.
Further detail
Kelsen’s pyramid places the Constitution at the summit, above treaties, statutes, ordinances, and administrative regulations.
A statute enters into force through two required stages: promulgation or signature, followed by publication.
A statute normally enters into force on the day after its publication, unless the text provides for an earlier or later date.
The principle that no one is deemed to ignore the law applies to all legal texts, including case law, but Civil Code article 1132 allows a good-faith mistake of law or fact at the time of contracting to constitute a defect in consent.
Express repeal is stated by a new text, tacit repeal results from incompatibility between a new and an earlier text, and codification at constant law reproduces the earlier rule without changing its substance.
Promulgation → publication → entry into force
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A conflict of laws in time arises when the same situation may be governed by two successive laws, requiring a choice between the old law, the new law, or retroactive application of the new law.
Civil Code article 2 provides that a law applies only to the future and has no retroactive effect, so it normally cannot alter the legal constitution or past effects of an earlier situation.
A less severe criminal law applies retroactively to offenses committed before its entry into force when no final conviction has been rendered, under the principle of retroactivity in mitius.
The territoriality principle applies French police, security, and criminal laws to persons on French territory, whereas the personality principle makes laws concerning the status and capacity of French persons follow them abroad.
Further detail
A 2025 statute capping loan interest at 9% cannot alter a loan concluded in 2024 at 20%, because the earlier contract remains governed by the law applicable when it was concluded.
In the Princesse de Bauffremont case of 18 March 1878, the Cour de cassation held that acquiring German nationality to evade the French prohibition on divorce constituted fraud against French law and made the second marriage unenforceable against the prince.
Territoriality follows the territory; personality follows the French person
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📌 Custom secundum legem follows a statutory reference, custom praeter legem fills a gap in the statute, and custom contra legem conflicts with the statute and is only exceptionally accepted.
Further detail
Custom may support, supplement, or oppose the statute
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📌 The relative authority of res judicata means that a judicial solution binds only the parties to the dispute and does not bind the deciding court or other courts.
📌 Under Civil Code article 4, a judge must decide even when the law is silent, obscure, or insufficient, or risk being prosecuted for denial of justice.
Further detail
📌 An arrêt d’espèce resolves a particular case with limited influence, whereas an arrêt de principe states an interpretive rule intended to guide similar cases.
Jurisprudence interprets and applies; doctrine informs and proposes
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📌 Patrimonial rights have economic value and are generally transferable, seizable, and transmissible, whereas extra-patrimonial rights lack direct economic value, although they may produce indirect financial effects.
📌 A pledge affects a movable asset as security for a debt, whereas a mortgage affects an immovable asset; in either case, the secured creditor may be paid preferentially if the debtor defaults.
Further detail
An emphyteotic lease is a long-term lease concluded for a period between 18 and 99 years under article L. 451-1 of the Rural and Maritime Fishing Code.
Real rights are enforceable against everyone and give their holder a right of pursuit over the thing and a right of preference over personal creditors.
Real right: person → thing; personal right: creditor → debtor
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A real right is a legal relationship between a person and a thing, whereas a personal right is a legal relationship between a creditor and a debtor concerning an obligation to give, do, or refrain from doing something.
Natural persons are human beings, whereas legal persons are organized groups recognized by law as having rights, obligations, and a separate patrimony.
A natural person acquires legal personality at birth if born alive and viable, while the conceived child may be treated as already born when this is in its interest under the infans conceptus fiction.
An obligation of means requires the debtor to use all necessary efforts to achieve a result, whereas an obligation of result requires the debtor to achieve a precise result. — René Demogue
Further detail
📌 The capacity of a legal person is limited by the principle of specialty, so it may perform only legal acts connected with the purpose for which it was created.
Real rights concern a thing, whereas personal rights bind a creditor and a debtor.
📌 Extra-patrimonial public rights govern a person's relationship with the State and are opposable to private persons, whereas extra-patrimonial private rights govern relationships with other persons and are opposable to the State.
Extra-patrimonial rights are generally not measurable in money, transferable, seizable, transmissible on death, or subject to prescription.
Family rights arise from a person's family situation, whereas personality rights attach to a person because they are human.
Under Article 9 of the Civil Code, everyone has a right to respect for private life, and an infringement may justify compensation even when the disclosed fact is true or was revealed without malicious intent. — Code civil
The human body is inviolable and cannot be the object of a patrimonial right, but an infringement may be allowed for medical necessity or another person's therapeutic interest with the individual's consent unless consent is impossible.
Public extra-patrimonial rights oppose the person to the State, whereas private rights govern relations with other persons.
A unilateral act binds only one party, whereas a synallagmatic or conventional act creates reciprocal and interdependent obligations between the parties.
A consensual act is formed by the exchange of consent alone, whereas a solemn act also requires formalities prescribed by law, whose non-compliance may cause absolute nullity.
Article 1128 of the Civil Code requires the parties' consent, their capacity to contract, and lawful and certain content for a contract to be valid. — Code civil
Acquisitive prescription allows a person to acquire a right through the passage of time, whereas extinctive prescription causes a right or action to be lost through failure to exercise it within the required period.
Criminal liability primarily punishes and deters an offender and may exist without damage, whereas civil liability primarily compensates a victim and requires damage.
Civil liability requires a damage, a generating event, and a causal link between the generating event and the damage.
Contractual liability repairs harm caused by non-performance or defective performance of a contractual obligation, whereas extra-contractual liability applies when no contractual relationship binds the author and the victim.
Non-contentious proof is produced outside a trial, whereas contentious proof is produced during proceedings to establish a party's right or claim.
The right to proof may prevail over another protected right when the evidentiary measure is indispensable and the interference is proportionate to the aim pursued.
Non-contentious evidence is produced outside any trial, whereas contentious evidence is produced during a trial to establish a party’s rights and claims.
The right to evidence may prevail over another right, such as privacy, when the evidentiary measure is indispensable and the interference is proportionate to the aim pursued.
In the accusatory system, the parties exclusively provide evidence for their claims, whereas in the inquisitorial system the judge conducts the proceedings and gathers the evidence.
The rule of law generally does not have to be proved because the judge is presumed to know it, according to the principle jura novit curia.
Consent → capacity → form → lawful and certain content.
| System | Basis | Sanction or method |
|---|---|---|
| Law | Publicly established rules | Public authority |
| Morality | Individual or collective conscience | Moral approval or disapproval |
| Propriety | External social behavior | Generally no legal sanction |
| Religion | Belief in a deity and religious rules | Religious sanctions |
| Dimension | Private law | Public law |
|---|---|---|
| Object | Relationships between individuals | Organization of the State and public authorities |
| Purpose | Protection of individual interests and social relations | General interest and exercise of public authority |
| Main jurisdiction | Judicial order | Administrative order |
| Supreme court | Court of Cassation | Council of State |
Test your knowledge on Application and Sources of Law with 66 multiple-choice questions with detailed corrections.
1. What is objective law?
2. What are subjective rights?
Memorize the key concepts of Application and Sources of Law with 92 interactive flashcards.
What is objective law?
The set of legal rules organizing social life enforced by public order authority.
What are subjective rights?
Prerogatives recognized by objective law that subjects may exercise in relations.
How do objective law and subjective rights relate?
Objective law authorizes subjective rights, making them complementary concepts.
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