Pierre Joxe holds a law degree, and is a graduate of “Sciences Po Paris” and the London School of Economics. He entered the “Ecole Nationale d’Administration”, (class of 1962, “Albert Camus”), before joining the “Cour des Comptes” (Court of Auditors). In the meantime, he was rapporteur for the “Commissariat général au plan” (State Commission for economic planning) and lecturer at “Sciences Po Paris”.

François Mitterrand’s election as President in 1981 enabled him to take up the highest offices in the French Republic. Minister of Industry from May to June 1981, he chaired the Socialist group in the National Assembly between 1981 and 1984, when he was recalled to the government as Minister of the Interior and Decentralisation. Between 1983 and 1984, he was also an auditor at the “Institut des hautes études de défense nationale”.

In 1993, he was appointed First President of the Court of Auditors. Eight years later, he left the financial court to sit on the Constitutional Council. A few weeks before the end of his term of office, Pierre Joxe broke with his duty of confidentiality by publishing “Cas de conscience”. In it, he explains that, when the Perben II law was passed on March 9, 2004, he “almost resigned from the Council, as he found the decision on police custody of minors[lui] legally shocking”.

Pierre Joxe has been a member of the Paris Bar since March 2010, then of the Seine-Saint-Denis Bar, and now devotes his time to defending minors as a court-appointed lawyer. In his book “Pas de quartier? Délinquance juvénile et justice pour les mineurs” (2012), he makes the unequivocal observation that there has been a marked deterioration in the juvenile justice environment.