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Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
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You are in the company
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item0022B 522,523 522 11 November 2002 Don't Ditch ENA! I am a fan of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the great French graduate civil service college which attracts into public service a goodly proportion of France's best intellects. There is currently a revolt under way in French political circles against this 1945 foundation, inspired by Charles De Gaulle. ENA arouses many of the same resentments as the Oxbridge hegemony, in the UK - and the French have even coined a word for an ENA-educated manager - an "enarque". But the parallel is misconceived..I have experienced the brilliance of ENA graduates for myself. There are in fact three great graduate schools in Paris, all oriented towards public service - one centring on Engineering (for which intellectual disciplines the French have always had a correct appreciation, unlike the English), one on the Political Sciences (I cannot remember the exact name, but it's abbreviated to "Science-Po") - the third to the study of public administration itself, ENA. I saw their graduates at work close up, when I spent six months as a stagiaire at the Supreme French Administrative Court (Conseil d'Etat) in Paris, in 1963 - I was admitted as a "student administrative judge"... Most of my colleagues were products of the Grandes Ecoles, ENA in particular. My Tutor, Juge Marcel Pinet had come through the Engineering College, then expressed a preference for the judiciary - he was one of only two GE graduates admitted to the Conseil D'Etat in his year. The three Grandes Ecoles continue to act as a marvellous recruiting sergeant for the public service - including the brilliant French Corps Diplomatique. The parallel with the Oxbridge is misleading. The Grandes Ecoles are graduate institutions, and they are open only to those demonstrating at graduate level a specific interest in and aptitude for the public service. Entry is not by parental connection, school background, or social class. These pivotal institutions are unashamedly meritocratic. They take only the creme-de-la-creme of graduates from all over the country, and they enjoy the most enormous prestige - upon graduation their own alumni fan out through the French Civil Service, and into other sectors of public life, including politics and business. I wish we had comparable institutions here! I know great minds of the present rising generations who are lost to the study of law, accountancy, and to the City - I say "lost", because these are unchallenging, uninspiring pursuits which see most graduates bored and footloose by 40 - and that's a tragedy. My advice to the French is
- ** "Cultivate your (Civil
Service) Colleges! What do you think? Drop me a line
523 11 November 2002 Walwyn-Jones & Mendoza Sounds like a solicitors firm , doesn't it? Well it's not. This was the House of Lords case which decided last week that a statutory tenancy could be taken over as of right by the same-sex partner of a deceased statutory tenant. And although both gay-rights campaigners and the Press made much of the "precedent", the impact will not be substantial.
Rent Acts : Parliament has, since the post-WW2 period, tried to protect unfurnished tenants against bad landlords. They have used the device of the "statutory tenancy", which is said to supersede contractual tenancies, in a number of circumstances - and the Courts are given special powers to regulate the terms of statutory tenancies. In addition, when a protected tenant dies, Parliament has said that the statutory tenancy can be inherited by any member of tenant's family who was living with him before his death. This is not a conventional "property right" - a wayward son cannot return from Australia, on his mother's death, and lay claim to her statutory tenancy! The special statutory right is accorded only to a resident member of the deceased tenant's family, living there at the time of his death..
Human Rights Act: But the Judges did fall back on one of the reasoning-paths of the HRAct which is all-too-rarely deployed. The Courts are now empowered to interpret every Act of Parliament (not just recent Acts) in the light of the Human Rights Act, and to try and find ways of interpreting them so that they are "compatible" with the HRAct. Only if they cannot succeed in that are the Courts (specifically, the Court of Appeal only) entitled to make a "declaration of incompatibility", and call on the Government to change the statute law. In this case, the Courts did not need the second-arm of that reasoning: this was one of the very first cases in which the Court of Appeal had trodden this path of compatibility, rather than "declare" an incompatibility. They said that the Rent Act references to the deceased tenant's family must now be taken to include same-sex relationships. The wording of the Rent Acts was sufficiently broad, they considered, that this wider interpretation should now be adopted. Given the narrow methods of interpretation adopted by the English Courts, such opportunities for flexibility rarely arise - but it is good news that the Court of Appeal is willing to seize the opportunity, when it arises... While none of this reasoning is revolutionary, the case will nevertheless be important. The judgment is another small step towards a gentler and more liberal society, at a time when many other less liberal messages are all too often heard, from Government. What do you think? Drop me a line
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