Keeper of the Seals from 1981 to 1986, then president of the Constitutional Council until 1995, figure of French socialism, Robert Badinter marked French political life for more than half a century, of course firstly through his long fight for the abolition of the death penalty, but more generally for the principles of justice that he defended.
Le Figaro
draws up a list, of course our exhaustive list, of the main sentences pronounced by the former lawyer and brilliant orator.
“There
are no men on this earth whose guilt is total”
On September 17, 1981, while he was Minister of Justice, Robert Badinter delivered a long, two-hour speech to the National Assembly for the abolition of the death penalty in France.
He deploys all the moral conception which underlies his refusal of the death penalty.
To explain for example:
“Using the death penalty against terrorists means, for a democracy, adopting the values of the latter”
.
The Minister of Justice implements the campaign promise of President François Mitterrand, elected the same year.
The next day, the bill was adopted by the deputies and on September 30 by the senators.
Finally, the law was promulgated on October 9, 1981.
Also read: Badinter's speech on the death penalty
“You have shamed me!
Shut up !"
On July 16, 1992, François Mitterrand was the first President of the Republic to pay tribute to the victims of the Vél'd'Hiv Roundup.
While attending the memorial ceremony, he laid a wreath to condemn the crimes of Vichy.
But he is booed by part of the public who shout
"Mitterrand to Vichy"
- a reference to the past of the President of the Republic during the Second World War.
Robert Badinter, between anger and emotion, was outraged by these demonstrations which disturbed the dignity of the ceremony.
“I only ask for the silence that the dead call for
,” he asks in particular.
“No one can take the life of another”
Opposed to euthanasia, Robert Badinter said in 2008:
"Does the State have the power and the right to say: 'Since you want to die, I will kill you?'
[…] No one can take life away from others in a democracy.
There is this principle that the State must respect
.
A figure of the socialist party, the former president of the Constitutional Council stood out in this regard from most of the voices within the left on this societal issue.
Also read “I don’t see myself pushing the syringe to kill”: in Narbonne, the fear of a text on euthanasia which shakes up care
“We are moving from a justice of liberty to a justice of security.
It's worrying"
In January 2009, under the five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy, Robert Badinter was questioned in an interview with Télérama, where he virulently opposed the law on secure detention, which in 2008 provided for the placement of a person in a social center -medical-judicial security officer at the end of his criminal sentence.
“From the moment we decide to keep someone in detention with regard to a virtual crime that they could commit because we consider them dangerous, you have moved into another system.
How then do you want to defend yourself since you are not accused of anything?”
, he argues.
“I am certain that the movement towards universal abolition will continue”
Forty years after his historic speech for the end of the death penalty in France, in 2021, the 93-year-old former Minister of Justice spoke during a conference at the National Assembly, wishing for universal abolition.
He points out in particular that three quarters of the 198 States of the United Nations today have abolished it.
But he explains that
“the fight is not over” and that
“very powerful or fanaticized”
states
continue to practice it.