He represented Finistère's 1st constituency in the National Assembly of France from 2007 to 2016,[1] as a member of the Socialist, radical, citizen and miscellaneous left.
In 1996, he returned to Brest, where he earned a doctorate in political science with a thesis entitled "Electoral Table of Western Brittany, 1973-1993" and written under the direction of Jacques Baguenard.
In July 2008, he was elected vice-president in charge of penal policy and served on the Laws Committee, working on the rights of prisoners.
In October 2013, with Dominique Bussereau and René Dosière, he published a report entitled "Opening a new cycle for the future of New Caledonia," which called for a new consensus among the various political forces of the territory.
[9][10][11] Following the Cahuzac affair, Urvoas was appointed rapporteur of draft laws on transparency proposed by François Hollande.
In 2013, he became director of the Thémis observatory of the Jean Jaurès Foundation, which is dedicated to justice and security issues and brings together judges, lawyers, police, academics, and politicians for debates and discussions.
[12][13] He was the author and rapporteur of a constitutional law proposal to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which the National Assembly adopted by a very large majority (361 votes in favor and 149 against) on 28 January 2014.
[14] In June 2014, he published a book, For the Unification of Bretagne, in which he called for the creation of a single community by merging the region and 4 departments.
[15] In the fall of 2014, he opposed the vote on a government amendment extending the moratorium on the right to an individual cell for each prisoner.
In his report on his visit, he called for improvement in the arrangement and rejected the idea of making French Polynesia an "associated country."
In the spring of 2015, in a report to the Prime Minister, he opposed the reinstatement of the crime of "national indignity" to punish terrorists, which he saw as a "secularization of excommunication" that would only serve to strengthen the "jihadist martyrology."
In a May 2015 note to the Jean Jaurès Foundation, he called for greater autonomy for the prosecutor's office vis-à-vis the executive branch and pleaded for constitutional reform that would strengthen judiciary independence.
[21] Upon assuming his post, he made the increase of the ministry's budget his main objective, arguing that the justice system was suffering from urgent problems.
In May 2016, he proposed a law that would make justice more simple and accessible, providing, for example, for divorce by mutual consent and the abolition of juvenile courts.
When such loans were made illegal the next year, he paid it back through his representative commission expense allowance (IRFM), a practice abolished by the National Assembly in 2015.
A civil servant named Jérôme Abbassène, who considered the loan a form of personal enrichment, went to the media with the story, and Cicero 29, a local anti-corruption organization, brought the case to court.
[30] Early September 2017, Jean-Jacques Urvoas put a whistle-blower on trial, after having leaked the way how the parliamentary office real estate, bought with public funds, was litigiously stated in his own private assets for €210,000.