An unnecessary mess!
The facts: last Saturday, the mayor of Nice signed a decree mandating the wearing of sanitary masks in public spaces starting this Monday.
A slight hitch: the corresponding law had not yet been enacted due to the lack of a validating opinion from the Constitutional Council.
In this legal void, the Human Rights League, represented by lawyer Mireille Damiano—incidentally, the leader of the (far) left coalition in the municipal elections—and another lawyer, Jean-Marc Le Guers, in a personal capacity, requested the Administrative Tribunal to annul this decree.
Having become aware of the delay in the enactment of the health emergency law (the Constitutional Council gave its approval during the day) and realizing the legal discrepancy, the City Hall withdrew its decree yesterday morning to render the annulment requests submitted by the plaintiffs to the Administrative Tribunal moot. Consequently, the tribunal declared a dismissal.
But later in the evening, upon learning of the law’s validation by the Constitutional Council, the City Hall issued a new decree valid for just one day, from Monday to Tuesday, which would be replaced by another valid from Tuesday, the day of the law’s enactment.
In hindsight, it seems like we’re navigating a maze of thought, where linearity gives way to obtuseness.
But above all, why complicate things when they are simple? It would have sufficed to wait for the law’s enactment (even a first-year law student knows that a law becomes such after its publication in the Official Gazette and not when it’s voted on by Parliament) and then issue a local decree. One day less, one day more after eight weeks of confinement, what difference would it have made?
Isn’t it said that it is better to think before acting, and even better, to do so twice before reacting?
