Is the minister of Justice an oxymoron?

Because he is not a minister like any other, the minister of Justice occupies a particular place which, despite a degree of suspicion, seems legitimate. The symbolic capital attached to the title must not lead us to forget the web of constraints (linked to the budget, career management, relationship with the media and above all politics) that confines the minister. At the heart of a permanent paradox, he represents the political power to the judicial authorities and justice to the political authorities. There are suspicions about his alleged influence over the course of justice (nomination of prosecutors, general instructions). Solutions have been recommended to remedy such doubts, some are radical (suppression of the ministry of Justice), other more graduated (instauration of a prosecutor of the nation to be democratically designated). However, the place of the ministry of Justice is legitimized by an irreducible triptych: the coherence of the judicial organization within our parliamentary democracy, the need for a ministerial presence in periods of crisis, the unity of the law and the state.