Justice et magistrat.es : une GRH en miettes ? Une analyse contextualiste, comparative et pluridisciplinaire

In response to a request from the Mission Droit et Justice2, this research attempts to shed light on the transformations in the human resources management (HRM) of judges. Led by a multidisciplinary team (law, management sciences and sociology) of French and Belgian researchers, it aims to characterize the HRM model of justice and its main evolutions by proceeding to a systematic comparison of the French and Belgian cases, assisted by a Swedish counterpoint. It also seeks to evaluate and reveal on this basis their possible malfunctions, deficiencies, and incoherences. Relying on a qualitative methodology that mobilizes more than a hundred semi-directive interviews (n=122) with the organizing bodies involved in HRM but especially with the judges themselves and their heads working in French (n=13), Belgian (n=9) and Swedish (n=4) courts and first instance jurisdictions of different sizes, the report proposes a contextualist analysis (contents, contexts, processes) of HRM models by focusing on the essential actors who activate and translate them locally, those whom we refer to as ‘local managers' (heads of courts). After setting the institutional and statutory scene in the French, Belgian and Swedish judiciaries, it describes the organizational configurations and HRM models and questions their correspondence, focusing more particularly on the French and Belgian cases. It analyzes principles, tools, and practices of five dimensions of HRM: recruitment, training, career, evaluation, and remuneration. It examines the central place hold by these ‘local managers' court management by focusing on their environment, their roles, their organizing work, their working conditions and their power to act. The three questions the report points out – the consistency and relevance of the HRM model, the heads of courts' empowerment and capacity to act, the professionalization of human resources management in an institution that is still heavily marked by a professional governance represented by a collegial form – warn on the risks of a crumbling of HRM... of an ‘HRM in pieces'.