Researching the Law of France

At a glance

Legal system family

Civil law, codified. Article 34 of the Constitution reserves to statute the regime of property, real rights, and civil and commercial obligations.³

Official gazette

Journal officiel de la République française. Published by the Direction de l'information légale et administrative, and exclusively electronic since 1 January 2016.¹

Constitution in force

Constitution du 4 octobre 1958. The Conseil constitutionnel serves the text in force as current to the constitutional revision of 8 March 2024.³

Language of the authoritative text

French. Article 2 of the Constitution states that the language of the Republic is French.³

French legal research runs through a small number of state services, and the concentration is a convenience and a hazard in equal measure. Almost any question can be started in one place. That also means one host's availability decides whether the work happens at all, which is not a theoretical concern here.

The Journal officiel de la République française is published by the Direction de l'information légale et administrative, a directorate under the Prime Minister. DILA states the effect of publication plainly in its own account of the mission: texts published in the Journal officiel enter into force, absent an exception, on the day following publication, and it is publication that makes them enforceable against citizens.

Since 1 January 2016 the Journal officiel has been exclusively electronic. DILA attributes the change to loi n° 2015-1713 of 22 December 2015, and lists décret n° 2015-1717 of the same date, on the dematerialisation of the Journal officiel, among the texts that found its own remit. The authenticated electronic edition distributed on legifrance.gouv.fr is the version that counts. A researcher comparing a French text from before 2016 with one from after it is comparing two different kinds of object: a printed gazette of record in the first case, and an authenticated file in the second. Note the contrast with Italy, where the printed Gazzetta still prevails over the electronic copy.

Legifrance was created by décret n° 2002-1064 of 7 August 2002, modified by an arrêté of 22 December 2015, as the public service for distributing law over the internet. Free access covers the Constitution, the codes, statutes, ordonnances, décrets, arrêtés, texts from independent administrative authorities, and ministerial bulletins, alongside European and international material and extended national collective agreements.

DILA's remit runs wider than the gazette. The same directorate publishes the national record of commercial and associative life, which it describes as its guarantee of economic and financial transparency: the Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the Bulletin officiel des annonces de marchés publics, and the Bulletin des annonces légales obligatoires, each with a published interface of its own. A researcher tracing a French company or an association, rather than a statute, is looking for one of those bulletins.

The Constitution of 4 October 1958 is the constitution in force. The Conseil constitutionnel publishes the integral text and labels the version it serves as current to the constitutional revision of 8 March 2024. The Conseil's own list of revisions gives the most recent one as loi constitutionnelle n° 2024-200 du 8 mars 2024, on the freedom to have recourse to voluntary termination of pregnancy, and the text as it stands carries that freedom in article 34. Neither page says which article the revision changed, so neither does this guide. Anyone quoting a constitutional article should check that label on the Conseil's page rather than trust a printed edition to be current, because the revision rate is low enough to make a stale copy look convincing.

Article 34 is also the shortest route to the shape of the system. It reserves to statute the regime of property, real rights, and civil and commercial obligations, which is a constitutional statement that private law is legislated rather than accumulated case by case. The codes that occupy that reservation are published as law in force on Legifrance.

Article 2 settles the language question in one line: the language of the Republic is French. No separate statute is needed for the point that matters here, which is that the French text is the text.

A practical warning, recorded because it changed how this page was researched. legifrance.gouv.fr refused every direct automated request made while this page was prepared, returning HTTP 403 to a fully browser-shaped request as readily as to a bare one. The site works normally in a browser. Anyone building a tool against French primary law should plan on the published interfaces rather than on fetching pages, and anyone reading a secondary source that claims to quote Legifrance is entitled to ask how the quote was obtained. For that reason the fact block above traces nothing to Legifrance. Its claims come from the Conseil constitutionnel and from DILA, both of which serve their pages to anyone who asks.

The separate site journal-officiel.gouv.fr, also run by DILA, carries sections for the Journal officiel, for associations and foundations, for trade union and professional organisations, and for the Bulletin des annonces légales obligatoires. Its pages are assembled in the browser, so a fetched copy shows the navigation and nothing else, and the section paths are not guessable from outside. Start from its home page rather than from a remembered URL.

Each document this page leans on, with its publisher, the date it was read, and a note on the one that could not be fetched at all, is listed in France: Sources and Notes.

Primary sources online

• Legifrance (opens an external site)The Journal officiel, the codes, and consolidated texts. Free in a browser; it refuses automated clients.
• Journal officiel (opens an external site)DILA's gazette site, including association notices and the Bulletin des annonces légales obligatoires.
• Constitution du 4 octobre 1958, texte intégral (opens an external site)The Conseil constitutionnel's own text, labelled with the revision it is current to.
• DILA, diffusion légale (opens an external site)The publisher's statement of what the Journal officiel is and what publication in it does.
• Conseil d'État (opens an external site)Administrative supreme court. Decisions, and the advisory opinions that precede much legislation.
• Cour de cassation (opens an external site)Supreme court for civil and criminal matters. Reachable in a browser; it turns automated clients away with a script stub.

Reviewed 2026-08-31. 6 sources cited on this page.