Because France is a civil law country, case law is not as important as it is in the United States. France does not have a comprehensive reporter system similar to the federal and regional reporters of the U.S. The most important French courts are the Cour de cassation (Court of Cassation), the Conseil d’État (Council of State), and the Conseil constitutionnel (Constitutional Council). Decisions from these courts are available online and in print. Researchers are likely to find decisions from the highest French courts; locating lower court decisions is often difficult to impossible.
The best place to begin searching for French cases in their original language is Légifrance, a free official service of the French government. Légifrance includes a page for jurisprudence (court opinions), with dedicated subpages for jurisprudence constitutionnelle (opinions of the Conseil constitutionnel, 1958–present), jurisprudence administrative (opinions of administrative courts, 1873–present), jurisprudence judiciare (opinions of judicial courts, 1805–present), and jurisprudence financière (opinions of financial/audit courts, 1954–present). Also allows searching across all types of opinions, an advanced search page allowing for searching by field, various filter options (such as date and jurisdiction), and browsable subject classifications for jurisprudence administrative and jurisprudence judiciare.
Additional resources at the Law Library for finding French court opinions include:
French cases in English translation are very difficult to find. In addition to the source listed below, journal articles may include portions of key cases in translation or describe them in depth. General online searching may occasionally prove successful in locating translations of a small number of well-known cases. French case law is not available in Lexis or Westlaw.