Abstract:Résumé Cet article met en lumière les inégalités des requérants dans les conditions d’accès au tribunal administratif. À partir de l’étude statistique d’un grand nombre de jugements, les auteurs soulignent d’abord un important effet de sélection : les cadres et professions intellectuelles (s’agissant de la fonction publique) ainsi que les artisans et chefs d’entreprise (s’agissant des litiges fiscaux) sont fortement sur-représentés devant le tribunal. Ensuite, la probabilité d’obtenir gain de cause ne dépend p… Show more
“…These findings confirm those of studies on the users of ombuds institutions in other national contexts, where women have been shown to be significantly underrepresented, with some notable exceptions (Hubeau, 2018). They also confirm existing studies on access to administrative courts: in France, for instance, around two-thirds of complainants are men (Spire and Weidenfeld, 2011; Weidenfeld, 2008). Figure 1.Comparison of gender as percentages.…”
Section: Results Of the Studysupporting
confidence: 85%
“…day (Spire and Weidenfeld, 2011). They might also have more often observed that 'talking to people' is more effective than writing.…”
While access to civil-law institutions has been a traditional area of socio-legal research, access to administrative justice still constitutes an underresearched field. In the field of administrative law, public ombuds institutions represent an important pathway to resolve disputes without invoking a court. To date, we have little knowledge about who uses these ombuds institutions and which factors facilitate access to the ombuds. In this paper, on the basis of our survey among users of the Austrian Ombudsman Board (n = 8,274), we explore the effects of institutional design on the user population. The findings suggest that the two outreach measures – regular consultation days and a weekly TV broadcast – contribute to reducing existing inequalities with regard to users’ sociodemographic characteristics.
“…These findings confirm those of studies on the users of ombuds institutions in other national contexts, where women have been shown to be significantly underrepresented, with some notable exceptions (Hubeau, 2018). They also confirm existing studies on access to administrative courts: in France, for instance, around two-thirds of complainants are men (Spire and Weidenfeld, 2011; Weidenfeld, 2008). Figure 1.Comparison of gender as percentages.…”
Section: Results Of the Studysupporting
confidence: 85%
“…day (Spire and Weidenfeld, 2011). They might also have more often observed that 'talking to people' is more effective than writing.…”
While access to civil-law institutions has been a traditional area of socio-legal research, access to administrative justice still constitutes an underresearched field. In the field of administrative law, public ombuds institutions represent an important pathway to resolve disputes without invoking a court. To date, we have little knowledge about who uses these ombuds institutions and which factors facilitate access to the ombuds. In this paper, on the basis of our survey among users of the Austrian Ombudsman Board (n = 8,274), we explore the effects of institutional design on the user population. The findings suggest that the two outreach measures – regular consultation days and a weekly TV broadcast – contribute to reducing existing inequalities with regard to users’ sociodemographic characteristics.
“…Interestingly, we observe a more significant impact for litigated conflicts: income is a more determining factor in satisfaction with the outcome when the judge makes a decision than when a solution is found outside the courtroom. This result sheds light on the unequal experiences with the legal system (Spire and Weidenfeld, 2011): when people turn to the courts, the wealthiest respondents are much more likely to be satisfied with the legal decision than low-income respondents.…”
Section: Unequal Satisfaction With the Outcome Of The Conflictmentioning
This paper shows that social inequalities are cumulative and occur at each stage of the dispute pyramid, from the identification of a conflict through to satisfaction with its outcome. Based on a large and original survey on ordinary people's representations of and practices within the legal system in France (N = 2,660), our study finds that an individual's contact, or lack of contact, with a legal intermediary, who may be a legal professional or a non-legal professional, has a very significant impact on the decision to take a case to court. Contact with a legal intermediary also influences the individual's satisfaction with the outcome, but not in the same way for all plaintiffs: income is a more determining factor in satisfaction with the outcome in cases where the judge makes a decision than in cases where a solution is found outside the courtroom.
“…In the end, except for a few taxpayers who do not know how to conduct themselves during their hearing (Spire and Weidenfeld, 2011), the only sentence that has any real significance occurs when the court declares the tax debt to be a jointly held obligation: such a characterization allows the tax authority to transfer the corporate tax debt to its director. It is as if the criminal procedure were to function in the same way as a purely administrative process, the only purpose being to recover unpaid taxes.…”
Since roughly 2008-2009, the governments in France and in Britain have encouraged more rigorous penalization of tax fraud. In this article, we compare the implementation of these policies in the two countries on the basis of qualitative and quantitative data. Whilst publicly calling for harsh punishment against tax dodgers, in practice both governments tend to seek a balance between the growing demand for tax equality and the belief that the State should not intervene in the economic realm. The result is a different approach on either side of the Channel:whereas the British institutions support an "exemplary punitive" system, French regulatory system favours a "quasi-administrative" treatment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
