French courts are divided into two separate branches: the judicial branch and the administrative branch.
Courts in the judicial branch settle disputes between private parties and punish those who have committed criminal offences.
Courts in the administrative branch have jurisdiction where a public body is involved:
Administrative courts therefore rule on a wide range of matters: town planning, the environment, taxation, asylum and immigration, the civil service, social welfare, hospital liability, public order, elections and more.
Administrative judges are independent, irremovable from office and impartial.
The administrative judges strike a balance between the public interest and the protection of individual rights. They review the lawfulness of acts adopted by the authorities. They may annul unlawful regulations and individual administrative decisions. They may also order the authorities to compensate a person where their activity has caused harm.
They may sit as a panel (usually of 3 judges) or, in certain cases, sit alone. In particular, they rule alone in urgent procedures (référés), taking interim decisions justified by urgency. They may thus suspend the enforcement of a decision or order the authorities to put an end to a serious and manifestly unlawful interference with a fundamental freedom.
The administrative courts of appeal were created in 1987 and began operating in 1989.
The Paris Court has nine chambers, across which 50 judges are distributed, assisted by 49 registry staff and 15 judicial assistants.
The Court hears appeals against judgments of the administrative courts of Paris, Melun and Montreuil, as well as those of New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna. It also rules directly, at first instance, on certain disputes, for example in broadcasting and cinema matters. In 2025, the Court decided 5,735 applications and the average time to judgment was 9 months and 21 days.
The lawyer acting for the individual, or the public authority, wishing to challenge the administrative court’s judgment files an “application” with the Court electronically.
The application is sent to the opposing party so that it can put forward its arguments. For a few months, the case is the subject of exchanges between the parties, whose lawyers file written “pleadings” with the Court.
The judge-rapporteur then examines the case file in depth and prepares a report and a draft judgment. This work allows a first exchange of views between the judges responsible for deciding the case (the president, the rapporteur and a third judge of the chamber), at a preparatory session also attended by a fourth judge, the “public rapporteur”.
At the hearing, the public rapporteur independently proposes a solution to the dispute, and the parties or their lawyers make observations.
After the hearing, the three judges responsible for deciding the case deliberate together, without the parties or the public rapporteur, and adopt the solution to the dispute. The judgment is then made public within about two weeks and sent to the parties.
Court clerk
Lawyer
Associate judge
President
Rapporteur
Public rapporteur
Representative of theThe Hôtel de Beauvais was built between 1654 and 1660 for Pierre de Beauvais, adviser to the King, and his wife, Catherine-Henriette Bellier, first chambermaid and confidante of Anne of Austria. Located in the Marais district, favoured by the French aristocracy of the day, it was erected on the site of a former town house given to Chaâlis Abbey in the 13th century, whose cellars still survive beneath the Court.
Antoine Le Pautre, architect to the King, made the most of the constraints of an irregular, landlocked site by erecting an original building whose main courtyard, unique in shape, nonetheless observes the rule of symmetry, and whose garden was created at first-floor level. The building, for which some of the stone intended for the Louvre palace was used, pays tribute to Catherine Bellier: many of the mascarons in the main courtyard depict rams’ heads — a play on her name — and one is said to be her own portrait.
Barely completed, on 26 August 1660 the mansion welcomed Cardinal Mazarin, the Queen Mother and part of the court to watch the ceremonial entry into Paris of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain, whose marriage had just been celebrated at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
However, deep in debt and now widowed, Catherine de Beauvais was obliged to sell the mansion in 1686, after which it passed through the hands of various owners. Among them, Count Van Eyck, ambassador of the Prince-Elector of Bavaria, hosted the seven-year-old W. A. Mozart and his family there from November 1763 to April 1764, during the first Paris stay of his European tour.
Seized during the French Revolution, then bought back and let out, the mansion was converted into a tenement building in the early 19th century, at the cost of major works including the addition of an extra storey. In the 1930s, despite its insanitary condition, it housed more than a hundred residents. Acquired by the City of Paris in 1943 and listed as a historic monument in 1966, it saw its last inhabitants leave in 1987. From 2000 to 2003, the State carried out a major restoration project there, allowing the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal to move in in 2003.