Ordonnance

In the French justice system, the word can also refer to a summary ruling made by a single judge for simple cases.

16 of the French Constitution, enabling him to take emergency measures in times where the existence of the Republic is at stake (a form of reserve powers) are not called ordonnances, but simply décisions.

If the bill passes in Parliament, the French Cabinet can issue ordonnances on the given legal matter within the specified time period.

This proved in 1986 to be a source of tension, during a period of cohabitation when President François Mitterrand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac were of opposite political opinions, and the President refused to sign ordonnances requested by the Prime Minister, forcing him to go through the normal parliamentary procedure,[1] but it was then controversial at the time whether he had the right to refuse to sign them.

Until Parliament has voted the ratification bill, the ordonnances, similar to executive orders, can be challenged before the Council of State.

[8] Article 74-1 of the Constitution allows the Government to extend legislation applicable to Metropolitan France to overseas territories by ordonnances.

[6] The use of ordonnances for controversial laws is generally criticised by the opposition as antidemocratic and demeaning to Parliament (Guillaume, 2005) in much the same way as the use of article 49§3 to force a bill to be passed.

[10] Ordonnances have been extensively used as a form of rule by decree in periods where the government operated without a working Parliament: Vichy France, where the executive had dismissed Parliament and other democratic structures, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, until it could establish a legislature, and in the last days of the French Fourth Republic[11] and the early days of the French Fifth Republic, until the new constitution had come into force and legislative elections had been held (article 92 of the Constitution, now repealed).

Certain legal texts enacted by the King in the medieval and ancien régime eras were called ordonnances, the best known of which today is the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts.