For a redefinition of the personal status.

Summary The choice of this topic stems from an observation: while the "crisis" of conflicts of laws affects the field of obligations across the Atlantic, in countries with a Savignian tradition, the fervent supporters of change are contained in the category of personal status. This category is in fact currently undergoing a profound evolution both in terms of its content and its regime. Individual and family status, the traditional component of the category, is breaking down. The contractualization and the conflict of values which affect the composition of the category generate in private international law an abundance of contradictory logics, which are the cause of the fragmentation of the category. This study proposes to redefine the category of personal status. The aim is to recover the full meaning of the term status, which is both a legal condition of the person (status) and a coherent set of norms (slatutum). The first part of the study deals with the category in its relations with the concept of legal person. A reflection on the formation of the category (Chapter I) and on the very notion of person (Chapter II) attest to the role of an unavailable conception of the person as the foundation of personal status (Title I). Unavailability also proves to be the criterion of the contours of the category (Title II). As a status establishing the person, personal status groups together the institutions to which the individual is invited, in order to constitute his own identity, to adhere but which he cannot create: the human body (Chapter I), the bond of filiation (Chapter II) and, to certain degrees, the family environment (Chapter III). The second part deals with the methodology best suited to protect the contours of personal status thus redefined. To the unity of the status, corresponds a unitary attachment of the category. The notion of integration environment, the stable anchorage of an individual in a given country (Title I) justifies the proposed attachment to habitual residence (Chapter I) and a reorganization of conflicts of jurisdiction (Chapter II). But the unity of personal status thus recovered cannot be preserved without a resurgence of statutism (Title II), which is the only way to counter the imperialism of fundamental rights (Chapter I) by an imperative implementation of personal status itself (Chapter II).