Paris Letter: Rachida Dati is often described as President Nicolas Sarkozy's twin sister. Like her mentor and idol, France's justice minister is hard-working, energetic and ambitious. Like him, she does not take kindly to criticism and turns brittle and sarcastic when challenged.
Dati's appointment following Sarkozy's election in May is still portrayed as a symbol of a new, multi-ethnic France of opportunity and promotion by merit. The daughter of a Moroccan bricklayer and an illiterate Algerian housewife, Dati was long one of the most popular government members.
But her approval rating fell to 44 per cent in November, largely due to virulent opposition from lawyers and magistrates to her reform of the "judiciary map" - the geographical distribution of courts across the country.
"Of course there are people who aren't happy. It's a difficult reform; if it wasn't, somebody would have done it by now," Dati said in an interview with The Irish Times.
Her main argument is that the "judiciary map" has not been touched since 1958, when the government merely tidied up a structure dating from the 19th century. "It no longer corresponds to the demographic and geographic reality of France," she insists.
But France now has 20 million more citizens than it did in 1958, and Dati's reform will shut down more than 300 jurisdictions.
In excess of half of the courts to be closed are tribunaux d'instance- the local courts where individuals deal directly with judges on such matters as unpaid debts, guardianship for the infirm and evictions. For some inhabitants of the provinces, a courthouse that shuts down is like a school, post office or railway line that disappears: it means the death of the countryside.
This autumn, as Dati travelled around France announcing which courts would be closed, demonstrators brandished "Attila-Dati" placards. Several protests turned violent. Magistrates went on hunger strike in the hope of retaining their jurisdictions.
More than 1,000 personnel will be moved at taxpayers' expense.
"The reform is neither right-wing nor left-wing," she insists. (Critics claim she has closed fewer right-wing jurisdictions.) Others accuse her of attacking the "judiciary map" with a hatchet. The reform will cost €500 million.
"I am not doing away with anything," Dati says but simply regrouping courts in "poles" that will be more efficient. Her critics say citizens should not have to drive 100km (62 miles) to a courthouse, that not everyone has access to a car and that far-flung districts are poorly served by public transport.
"People tell me they want rapid justice," she counters.
"You don't decide to live in a place because it has a courthouse - it's not like schools or clinics. People prefer a quick decision to living next door to a tribunal where there's no magistrate and decisions are handed down three years later. The efficiency of the justice system requires that we regroup our means, and that we integrate new technologies. In an age when you can buy a train ticket on the internet, you should also have access to judiciary procedures."
Dati's detractors say they were scandalised by her posing for the cover of Paris Matchmagazine this month wearing a pink panther-print Dior dress, in a five-star hotel near her ministry. Like Sarkozy, she is known for having rich, powerful friends, and a weakness for designer clothes and jewellery. One of the Paris Matchphotos shows her in black fishnet stockings and stiletto-heeled black boots.
She has already pushed through legislation on mandatory sentencing for repeat offenders and has angered lawyers by announcing she may allow divorce by mutual consent in a notary's office rather than a judge's chambers. One of her next projects is to decriminalise business law.
"She sends out circulars telling judges to be tough with juvenile delinquents, but she wants to go easy on crooked businessmen," complains a member of the judiciary press. "That's Sarkozy's France: intransigent with the weak, and craven with the powerful."
There are muted questions about Dati's relationship with Sarkozy. She has travelled with him on official trips to the US, Morocco, Algeria and China and, since the president's divorce in October, seems almost a substitute first lady.
Le Nouvel Observateurmagazine made the most overt insinuation, calling Dati la favorite, an allusion to mistresses of the kings of France.
Because she has never been elected to public office, Sarkozy has "given" her the staunchly right-wing seventh arrondissement of Paris, where she will stand for mayor next March.
Though she went on holiday with Sarkozy and his then wife Cécilia last summer, Dati says she still calls him " Monsieur le Président" and addresses him with the formal vous.
"In fact, I don't see him that often," she told Paris Match. "And the little I see him, we don't talk about my work [which she discusses with the prime minister]. We just talk about life, about what we're reading . . . We talk about films too, even if they're old DVDs."
