Written Proof - Burdens of Proof - page 91

5 Written Proof

On March 13, 2000, France—the country that gave bureaucracy its name,
where citizens must carry at all times their papiers d'identité , where admin-
istrative procedures are synonymous with intricate theatrical performances
of forms, stamps, signatures, and countless pièces justiicatives —inally got
around to legally defining written proof: “Civil code, art. 1316—Documen-
tary, or written, evidence, results from a series of letters, characters,
numbers, or any other signs or symbols endowed with an intelligible sig-
nification, whatever their media or the means of their transmission.”
The clarification came hot on the heels of Henri III's 1566 Ordonnance
de Moulins , France's previous comprehensive response to innovation in
evidential technologies. Concerned with reducing both the quantity and
duration of litigation, the 1556 Ordonnance mandated that the emerging
technology of written documents would henceforth supplant witness tes-
timony in all contractual disputes.
The scope of the 2000 reform—its perceived need to reexamine and
rearticulate fundamentals—was spurred on by an event that seemed to
shake l'état de droit to its very core, the emergence of the Internet. In the
late 1990s, at the height of the dot-com boom, French media breathlessly
reported on the Internet's power to upend traditional business models,
flatten social hierarchies, foster scientific innovation, and stimulate politi-
cal change, while generating massive wealth in the process. Tapping deeply
into France's anxieties over its declining global powers, the Internet seemed
to throw into sharp focus everything that was wrong with the French
model. Inherently horizontal, adaptable, and capital-friendly, the Internet
was driven by a new type of business culture, feverish yet relaxed, as
removed as could be from the French traditions of elitism and reverence
for the state perpetuated by the Grandes écoles . Indeed, in every office and