Paris-Panthéon-Assas University

Panthéon-Assas University

Université Panthéon-Assas
File:Logo of Panthéon-Assas University, 2016.jpg
Type	Public
Established	1970 (1970)
Affiliation	Sorbonne University group Chancellerie des Universités de Paris
Budget	€91 million (2013)
President	Guillaume Leyte
Academic staff	2,060
Administrative staff	356
Students	17,705
Location	Paris , France
Campus	Urban
Colours	Red and white
Website	www.u-paris2.fr

Panthéon-Assas University (Template:Lang-fr [ynivɛʁsite pɑ̃teɔ̃ asas], also referred to as "Assas" [asas], "Paris II" [paʁi dø], or "Sorbonne Law School") is a public university in Paris, France.

It took over Paris Law Faculty, from the University of Paris (nicknamed "the Sorbonne") when the latter was divided into autonomous universities in 1970. It is the university of Law of the Sorbonne University group and may become the faculty of Law of the Sorbonne University, re-creation of the University of Paris.

Panthéon-Assas University is renowned for excellence in Law. Since its founding in 1971, it has produced two presidents, four prime ministers and the holders of thirty-seven other ministerships in France and around the world. Forty alumni of the university have been members of various parliaments as well.

The majority of the nineteen campuses of Panthéon-Assas are located in the Latin Quarter, with the main campuses on place du Panthéon and rue d'Assas. The university is composed of four departments specializing in law, economics, public and private management, and political science, and hosts twenty-four research centres and five specialized doctoral schools. Every year, the university enrolls approximately 18,000 students, including 3,000 international students.

History

Pediment of the Paris Law Faculty.

Panthéon-Assas was established as the heir of the Faculty of Law and Economics of Paris from the University of Paris (nicknamed "the Sorbonne"), which had been founded in the middle of the 12th century, and which officially ceased to exist on December 31, 1970, following the student protests of 1969. Clinging to the cultural legacy of the University of Paris, and considering that their faculty had already gathered professors from disciplines (such as political economics and political science) other than their own, most of the law professors of the faculty of law and economics wished only to restructure their faculty into a new university. In pursuit of this, the faculty founded the "University of law, economics and social sciences of Paris" or "Paris II".

The official name of the university was changed to "Panthéon-Assas (Paris II)" in 1990 and then to "Panthéon-Assas" only in 1988. The name Panthéon Assas is a reference to the main addresses of the pre-1968 faculty of law of Paris, which are now part of the university; namely, the buildings on place du Panthéon and rue d'Assas. The university is also referred to as "Assas" or "Paris II" and "Sorbonne Law School".

Panthéon-Assas is an associate member of the Sorbonne University group with the successors of the faculties of humanities and sciences the University of Paris, merging into Sorbonne University. It is the faculty of law of the Sorbonne University group. As the successor of the Law faculty of the University of Paris, it may become the faculty of Law Sorbonne University in the years to come.

Organisation and administration

Campuses

1

2

3

4

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Location of the university's main campuses within Paris: Panthéon (1), Assas (2), Vaugirard (3), and Charcot (4).

The university has eighteen campuses in Paris and one in Melun.

The administration offices and postgraduate studies are located in the structure designed by Jacques-Germain Soufflot and built in the late eighteenth century for the faculty of law of the University of Paris, on the plaza that rings the Pantheon; the building is shared with Panthéon-Sorbonne University. It is registered among the national heritage sites of France.

The largest campus of Panthéon-Assas is located on rue d'Assas and receives second-year to four-year law students. It was designed by Charles Lemaresquier, Alain le Normand and François Carpentier to accommodate the growing number of students at the University of Paris. It was built between 1959 and 1963 on the former grounds of Société Marinoni. At the time of its inauguration, its main lecture theatre was the vastest in France, with 1,700 seats; several concerts have been held in it, featuring Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Georg Solti, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Martha Argerich, Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Alfred Brendel, Arthur Rubinstein, Seiji Ozawa, Carlo Maria Giulini, or Samson François, among others. The scene at the Cairo airport from OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was filmed in its entrance hall.

Campus on rue de Vaugirard.

The campus on rue de Vaugirard gathers first-year students. It is located in the chapel wing of the defunct Jesuit College of the Immaculate Conception, where Charles de Gaulle had been a pupil; the chapel itself, dating from the eighteenth century, was transformed into a lecture theatre in the 1980s. The structure is a national heritage site as well. The campus on rue Charcot receives third-year and master students of economics. South-east of Paris, the campus in Melun, which opened in 1987, gathers over a thousand first-cycle students who do not reside in Paris.

The campus in Melun hosts local first-year students. It is located in the old town of Melun, on Saint-Étienne Island, among Roman and Gothic remains. The Institute of Law and Economics of Pantheon-Assas University is located there.

Assas building has been redesigned last ten years and now hosts a learning center. The campus in Melun also has an extension under work.

Departments and research centres

The university houses five academic departments: one for private law and criminal sciences, one for public law and political science, one for Roman law and history of law, one for economics and management, and one for journalism and communication (administered by the French Press Institute, which was incorporated into Paris II in 1969 serving as the latter's department for communication and journalism studies). In all, Panthéon-Assas comprises about two dozens of research centres, including the Institute of Higher International Studies, the Paris Institute of Comparative Law, and the Paris Institute of Criminology. In July 2012, Panthéon-Assas became the first university in France to open preparatory classes for the bar school entrance examination. In 2013, the university set up a distance learning degree in law.

Administration

Panthéon-Assas is governed by an administration council, a scientific council, and a council for studies and university life. Members of these boards serve two year terms. The president of Panthéon-Assas is elected by members of the administration council, for a four-year tenure; he or she presides over this council. The president is assisted by two vice-presidents and several professors elected within their respective academic departments. Members of the administration council choose the faculty representatives who make up the scientific council.

Academics

Admissions

The undergraduate law program of Panthéon-Assas is selective, with an acceptance rate of 14%. The first-year pass rate in law hovers around 40%. All French universities are legally obliged to allow students to change universities and curriculums after the first semester of their first year. However, they are allowed to accept as few or many students as they like; Panthéon-Assas accepts only 3% of transfer requests. Admission to the second year of the university's master programs is selective as well, some of these programs admitting only 1.7% of applicants.

Libraries

The campuses at rue d'Assas, rue de Vaugirard and Melun host the university library, which is open to all the students. The university's research centres, institutes and reading rooms host twenty-two more specialized libraries. The total seating area of the university's libraries spans over 3,400 m², and the university's collections gather over three hundred thousand volumes together. Students of the university also have free access to Cujas Library, which is the largest law library in Europe and which is co-administered by Panthéon-Assas and Panthéon-Sorbonne.

International relations

Assas is part of a network of 315 partner universities.

Research

In 2013, about €1.3 million from the annual budget of Pantheon-Assas were dedicated to research.

Journals and publications

The university's publishing house, Éditions Panthéon-Assas, was established in 1998.

Panthéon-Assas hosts several faculty-led publications in French: Jus Politicum ("Political Law") since 2008, the Revue de droit d'Assas ("Assas Legal Journal") since 2010 and Droits fondamentaux ("Human Rights") since 2012. They are all available online.

It also hosts a faculty-led publication in English, the Sorbonne-Assas Law Review, since 2012.

Joint academic programs

Panthéon-Assas offers several joint undergraduate and graduate programs with other French universities and institutions such as INSEAD, Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris-Sorbonne University, Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University, Paris-Dauphine University, ESSEC Business School, HEC Paris, or École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris.

The university offers international joint programs as well. It created in 2011 the Sorbonne-Assas International Law School which have campuses in Paris, Singapore and Mauritius. Since 2013, Panthéon-Assas, ESSEC Business School, and Yale Law School organise in Paris a summer school in law and economics, the Yale-Paris II-Essec Summer School.

Programs for "excellence"

Further information: Law schools and colleges in France

Officially not allowed by the Law to choose its students for its undergraduate degree like all universities in France, Panthéon-Assas developed a number of internal degrees in addition to the global undergraduate degree, like the College of Law and the Paris Law School. A lot of universities followed its steps.

Rankings and reputation

Rankings

Law

Panthéon-Assas University has always been ranked first in law in France in Eduniversal rankings. It is the "top law school in France" according to The Huffington Post, Le Nouvel Observateur, Indiana University, the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center of the University of Virginia, The Daily Beast, SAGE Publications, Louis Vogel, former president of Panthéon-Assas, in the The Financial Times, and Stacy Blackman, contributor at US News. In QS World University Rankings, based on English speaking publications, the university is ranked 101st-150th in Law (3rd in France).

Assas' undergraduate law program is ranked first by Eduniversal, the only one with 4 stars. It was also ranked first in the interdisciplinary degree Law and English.

Assas' masters law programs have the global best ranking from France by Eduniversal. 6 specialities have been studied and 12 of Assas master's degree have been in the top 10 (or top 5) of those speciality in 2016 (55 master's degree ranked in total). They were ranked as follow:

• Business Law: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th
• European and International Business Law: 1st and 9th
• Business Law and Management: 1st
• Tax law: 1st and 3rd
• Social Law: 1st and 6th
• Digital Law : 2nd

Its best-ranked master's degree is ranked 4th of Europe (1st of France) by Eduniversal.

Most of the students admitted at the French National School for the Judiciary come from Panthéon-Assas, more than 40% en 2011 (people who went to Assas Faculty of Law and then passed the exam from elsewhere not included).

According to "capital.fr", Assas graduates have the highest salary of all French law schools.

Economics and business

Assas undergraduate program has been ranked seven in 2016 by Eduniversal.

Assas was in 2011 the second best-ranked university (behind Paris-Dauphine University) for its master's degrees in business fields, with 20 ranked masters (law included) in Eduniversal ranking. In 2016, it was ranked as follow:

• International business: 1st
• Decisional computing: 1st
• Finance and banking: 2nd

Reputation

Assas has reputation of "excellence" in Law and cultivates its own image of being "the top law school in France".

Le monde des grandes écoles et des universités called it a "symbol of Made in France excellence". The French Research and Higher Education Evaluation Agency stated in 2013: "Paris II University presents itself as a university of excellence. This claim is not abusive. The university occupies – in Paris, in France, in the European Union and, more broadly, in the international scientific community – a prominent place. The university's reputation and notoriety has not been usurped. They are based on teaching and research activities as well as publications whose quality is recognized and celebrated in academia. And this beyond frontiers."

Notable people

Main article: List of Panthéon-Assas University people

Faculty

Among the professors of Panthéon-Assas who reformed French law, there are:

• Jean Carbonnier, who renewed huge parts of the French Civil Code in the 1960s and 1970s, and especially family law.
• Gérard Cornu, who wrote the new French Code of Civil Procedure in the late 1970s and is also well-known in France for his Dictionary of Legal Vocabulary, translated in English.
• Serge Guinchard, head of the first Judicial Studies Institutes of France (in Panthéon-Assas) in the 1990s and head of several governmental commissions for criminal procedure and criminal law reforms in the 2000s in France, Senegal and for the Council of Europe.
• Pierre Catala, who reformed inheritance law and law of donations with Jean Carbonnier in the 2000s, and who initiated the reform of French contract law, tort Law and law of evidence, and was the head of the official committee for its reform
• François Terré, president in 2008 of the legal section of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, head of the private committee for the reform of French Law of Obligations.

Alumni

In the judiciary field, outside France, alumni of Panthéon-Assas have included a chief justice of Brazil, a judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy and a former vice-president of the International Court of Justice, two former chairmen of the International Law Commission, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice, two chairmen of the International Arbitration Institute, a former president of the Greek Council of State.. The president of Greece and the first female president of the Central African Republic are also alumni of the university.

Presidents

To this day, Panthéon-Assas has been governed by nine presidents. The founding president, Berthold Goldman, a jurist, was succeeded by Jacques Robert, former member of the Constitutional Council of France, who was followed by Jean Boulouis, a private law jurist. Next came another private law jurist, Georges Durry, followed by Philippe Ardant, former president of the Constitutional Court of the Principality of Andorra and former president of the Arab World Institute. Panthéon-Assas was then presided by Bernard Teyssié, a specialist in social law, who was succeeded by Jacqueline Dutheil de la Rochère, a public law jurist. She was followed by Louis Vogel, a private law jurist. He implemented numerous innovations, the aim of which has been to adapt the education given at the University of Paris to the needs of the 21st century. He was elected head of the Presidents of Universities of France Society in 2010. Guillaume Leyte was elected president of the university on June 20, 2012.

See also

• Higher education in France
• University of Paris
• Paris Law Faculty
• Law schools in France
• Sorbonne Law School

Sources

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External links

• Official website
• Review report of the French Research and Higher Education Evaluation Agency (AERES), 2013