Paper's abstract

Valérie Varnerot, The duty of competence of the postmodern lawyer
French case-law obliges lawyers to anticipate the future and foreseeable states of statute-law and case-law. This duty is the consequence of a rigorous logical deduction. Especially, the future and foreseeable states of case-law can reasonably be inferred from the actual data of positive law such as the « progressive overruling » or the « prospective overruling ». But, this approach modifies the juridical reasoning : dialogical reasoning exclusively becomes a formal one. The authority argument throws out any controversy about syllogistic premises. Such a decision strengthens French case-law authority, which nearly looks like common law. Indeed, complexity and instability of contemporary law, known as post-modern law, driving out « all acquired data » and getting unforeseeable any modification of law, makes this solution unreasonable.

Key Words : sources, postmodernity, logic
tome 55, 2012: p. 309-344

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