Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Code pénal (France)
Summary
The Code pénal is the codification of French criminal law (droit pénal). It took effect March 1, 1994 and replaced the French Penal Code of 1810, which had until then been in effect. This in turn has become known as the "old penal code" in the rare decisions that still need to apply it.
The new code was created by several laws promulgated on July 22, 1992. It introduced the judicial notion of fundamental national interests (intérêts fondamentaux de la nation) (Book IV, Title I).
The Penal Code project began with the work of a commission created by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in a decree issued on November 8, 1974. The membership of the commission was set by a February 25, 1975 decree. The president of the commission was fr, later replaced by Guy Chavanon, the procureur général of the Court of Cassation. The definitive draft of Book I (General Provisions), heavily criticised by the criminal justice community, was rejected by the Élysée Palace on February 22, 1980.
After government changed hands in the 1981 presidential election, Robert Badinter, a former criminal lawyer who had become Minister of Justice, returned to the idea of penal code reform. Badinter took over the chairmanship of the commission created in 1975, whose membership had been greatly modified. The penal code project was discussed in the Parliament between 1989 and 1991.
Book I was approved in 1991 and was rapidly followed by Books II, III and IV.
The nouveau code pénal (new penal code, as it was initially known) was the result of several laws promulgated July 22, 1992, which took effect on March 1, 1994. While the code theoretically remained the same, and kept the same title, Code pénal, the new code was not so much a modified or even a recast Code pénal de 1810, but rather an original work of composition and of writing, with a new outline, new principles and a new formulation of the law.
It introduced a number of new concepts, such as the criminal responsibility of moral persons (responsabilité pénale des personnes morales) apart from that of the State, (Article 121-2), and increased the sentencing for almost all délits and crimes.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.