Slow and uncertain justice in matters of academic integrity

Abstract

Catherine de Gourcuff, a lawyer at the Paris Bar, invites us to understand the ways in which justice intervenes in matters of academic integrity in court or in disciplinary proceedings. She observes how little the academic order is equipped, by virtue of its professional standards, to make its procedures legally admissible. As a result, many academic situations cannot be dealt with by the courts. An example? The term 'plagiarism' does not exist in law, it is called 'forgery', a term that does not exist in the world of academic writing. Justice has difficulty in using codes of research ethics, because the legal and the academic do not identify in the same way the facts that the laws have provided for. And what about the real obstacle course that awaits the plaintiff who has to face a criminal trial? What researcher, what author, is prepared to devote two to ten years of his or her life to these procedures?