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Thèses

Legal Representation and Assistance of the litigant in court

KOULOCHERI Stavroula

Directeur de thèse : Yves-Marie Serinet

Description of the doctoral dissertation

Legal Representation and Assistance of the litigant in court”, as a procedural mechanism available to every jurisdiction, aroused a limited interest in French Doctrine throughout its evolution. Sometimes considered as a purely procedural technique having the sole purpose of serving occasionally and incidentally the functioning of the courts, its true nature and own function have been margined by legal science. The proposed research has two main lines of thought. It’s about highlighting, on the one hand, the opaque idiosyncrasies of “legal representation and assistance of the litigant in court” as a procedural method and, on the other hand, the teleology of the institution with a view to a more effective justice. The extent and the procedure of the institution from alpha to omega of the civil trial, the deconstruction of its nature and especially of the incomplete regulation of its sui generis nature and the abstract and restrictive rules of the jurisdictional organisation affecting the institution’s regulation constitute the cornerstones of this research. The study moves towards the reconstruction of the institution’s nature contributing to the subsidence of any confusion with similar theorems and to a better appreciation of the applicable law (elements that have been recognized by the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights). Given that Civil Procedure is in the era of Europeanization or even Internationalization, the treatment of the concerned procedural hypotheses and situations of international character interesting the application of International Private Law rules proves to be of the highest importance. With a view to a good justice, it is essential to study the triangular relation between the civil trial’s actors: the judge, the parties in court and the judicial officers (and especially the lawyer). This relation based especially on the dialogue, constitutive element of partnership justice, refers to the idea of contractual justice requiring, on its part, a closer cooperation between all the participants of the judicial process. This perspective calls into question the role and the responsibility of the legal representative and the defender. Justice efficiency being concerned, we are committed to analyze, evaluate and adopt a position on the contribution of the institution for its completion that cannot be either theoretical or illusory. The large scale of this subject will be examined according to the management of the fundamental rights of litigants and the proper administration of justice. Therefore, this many-facetted theme has a dogmatic nature which remains both practical and present, given the dematerialization and the attempted disappearance of the pure ‘jurisdictionalization’ of Civil Procedure, which confers uniqueness and interest on the topic both for the scientific and the litigants community.