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The increasingly repressive, securitarian approach witnessed over the past fifteen years has brought the founding normative conflict of criminal law to a head, placing the judicial authority in the position of the guardian of the longstanding repressive model of the French Republic. As the last bastion against the excessive extension of the prerogatives of the law-enforcement authorities and the development of a rigidly punitive approach, the only way out of this perilous position for the criminal judge is a new criminal policy restoring the notion of “Security” handed down by the French Revolution.