Nougatine of Nevers #1
Hello!
Here is the first one! It's super exciting to start this newsletter, I'm very excited to offer you my analysis, resources and to get your feedback.
This week, I share with you :
Committed Lawyers
The strength to talk about your projects around you
Alice's museum
For the most daring, the French version is here : French Nougatine #1
⚖️ Committed Lawyers
Today I would like to talk about committed lawyers.
The role of jurists is to read the rules of law, to enforce them, to denounce them. To do this, the jurist uses a strange toolbox with the following in it: reasoning by analogy, by deduction, jargon, syllogisms, legal qualifications of facts.
A committed jurist is someone who puts this know-how at the service of a cause that is close to his heart. Every lawyer can have his own cause and it is generally the result of a very personal impulse. Their movements, their causes, their means of action are very inspiring.
Because committed lawyers have, in my opinion, two extraordinary roles.
« Passers » from the social norm to the legal norm
Sometimes the social norm, let's saythe current that circulates in society, precedes the legal rule.For instance, in 2013 "marriage for all" is legalized in France.This is a good example of a case where the social norm had positioned itself first in favor of a change, an increase in freedom. This social impulse was translated into a legal norm. It is not always in this sense that change takes place.For example, the reduction of the speed limit on the French roads is actuated by the legal norm, but far from being supported by the social norm.
I have the intuition that the jurist plays a fundamental role: that of a passer from the social norm to the legal norm.Do you know the famous rape trial conducted by Gisèle Halimi, French lawyer, in 1978? In a nutshell, two Belgian tourists were assaulted and raped by three men, and they filed a complaint.The lawyer Gisèle Halimi completely assumes her intention not only to repair the damage suffered by the two victims, but to undertake a large symbolic trial.She asks inUne Farouche Liberté(not translated yet): "How to isolate a trial from its context: the culture and politics of a country?And why give up on shaking up opinion and changing morals?" She adds, "So yes, I wanted a trial-debate. A trial-tribune. A "show trial," as some would say".
This trial supported a social norm that aimed not only to recognize rape as a crime, but also to give a broader definition of it, to alleviate the stigma attached to its victims.This case set a precedent and led two years later to a revision of the French law to make rape a crime punishable by 15 years in prison, as well as to broaden the definition of rape to include any act of penetration. Previously, rapes were routinely less punished unless they were followed by the murder of the victim.
In this, committed jurists create the passage from social implicitness to legal effectiveness.
It is a resounding example in which the action of a committed jurist has served a cause, that of women, which gives them more rights, security and freedom.
Gisèle Halimi's intention to mediate the trial is a technique for summoning opinion and involving it in reflection and transformation. At that time, she had "testified" by learned people on the subject of rape, on what it represents and on the future that French society should reserve for it. The media coverage of the debates, the intervention of the press to raise public opinion and take its pulse played a key role in this transformation.
Bridge between the legal application of decisions and the concrete consequences for those subject to justice
Committed lawyers can create bridges between the application of laws and the real consequences on the litigants. Because the law can sometimes be incomplete, insufficiently effective, or generate difficult situations.
Here is the idea implemented by Marc Binnié. This clerk at the Tribunal de Commerce de Saintes (“Commercial Court of the city of Saintes”) has set up a help for company managers in difficulty. He realized that the managers of companies in liquidation were facing multiple difficulties in addition to the loss of their company (financial difficulty, family breakdown) which resulted in psychological and moral suffering. Thus, in 2013 he founded APESA France (Association of Psychological Assistance to Entrepreneurs in Acute Suffering). This association puts these managers in contact with a network of psychologists specifically trained in these cases. The particularity is the very fast treatment.
Courts in small and medium-sized cities and judicial professions as I know them are in daily contact with these situations. Such actions to help vulnerable people allow for a humane and realistic application of justice.
And you, do you know committed jurists? What do commitments inspire you?
🔊Talking about your projects around you
Talking about one's projects around oneself brings a lot of benefits. Everyone, friends, spouses, colleagues, gugus met in the street. I see three magical effects:
From the seed
Because in fact when you talk to someone about your project, when you take that step, it's because that project already has a significant existence in your head. Not the ephemeral ideas that cross your mind just once, no. The persistent, the malicious, the ingenious, yesthatidea that has been lodged for several days, months, weeks under your mane (=hair) (or what remains of it). When you've thought about it several times, when you say to yourself "I really want to do percussion, I feel so excited about that". Well, the fact of saying to a friend "I'm going to buy a drum set" gives a public birth to your project, the secret is revealed. So it's a symptom that for you it's important.
To the seedling
Second benefit: to create a kind of commitment to the person. After you've done that, you clearly have the risk that the person will come along and say, "How far along are you with your project?" And that puts a little pressure on your shoulder. A healthy pressure, by the way. Because in real life, you lose nothing by answering "no, I didn't do it, I didn't think about it". The person isn't angry, you didn't promise her something crazy (apart from a crazy solo). I'm a big fan of this feeling of "public commitment". Like an unconscious psychic mechanism that just says out loud in front of people that you're going to do something, creates a magical coercion, this kind of commitment that boosts you to actually do it.
Until it blooms
Third and final spell: feedback. It is almost automatic and has a bit of a crash effect, but is less painful. You want to run "10 kilometers in 45 minutes". You say so. And then, bim, a notice "it's hard, you're barely running at 10km/h".
So several things,
1. they can give you their opinion on the realization of your project as a whole, "Great idea to get back in the running!"
2. they give you external advice and recommendations "I have a very nice friend you could run with on the docks of la Seine".
Your project is growing. It was a little seed in your brain, you watered it by saying it out loud, it made it a little plant for you, and it's blossoming thanks to the recommendations and feedbacks from others.
See how powerful it is?!
What are those ideas you're thinking about that can soon turn into great projects?
🎨The Alice Museum
I took this picture in Berlin, under a railway bridge, it's a street-art collage. The street is a museum. And I like to walk there. It's rather the street “that walks me” (=brings me away?). I let go of my imagination, and it gets all agitated at every nook and cranny. A piece of architecture, a fraction of a poster, a neat street-art, it's boiling. I love the perspectives offered by the street, a ray of sunshine that has slipped between two low walls and three branches of trees, creating impromptu shadows. To marvel in the street and let the spirit wander in this open-air building, a delight.
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