Robert Badinter

Robert Badinter on February 3, 2007 at a demonstration against the death penalty in Paris.

Robert Badinter (born March 30, 1928 in Paris ) is a French politician ( Parti socialiste ), law professor, lawyer and author. In 1981, when he took office as Minister of Justice, he enforced the abolition of the death penalty in France .

He is married to the philosopher Élisabeth Badinter for the second time and has three children.

Life

His mother Charlotte's family emigrated to France in 1903 as a result of the pogroms in Tsarist Russia . His father Simon, a Jewish student who immigrated from Bessarabia in 1920 , took French citizenship in 1928 and ran a successful furrier wholesale business. Badinter's family lived in Paris before the occupation of France and fled first to Nantes and later to Lyon . On February 9, 1943, Simon Badinter was arrested during a raid in Lyon ordered by Klaus Barbie and murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp . Badinter, who narrowly escaped arrest himself, found shelter with his mother and older brother in the village of Cognin in Savoy until the liberation in 1944 . Thanks to forged identity papers and the secrecy of the villagers, he was able to continue to attend high school there.

After studying literature and law at Paris University , from which he graduated with a license , he received a state scholarship in 1948 and completed his studies at the renowned Columbia University in New York in 1949 with a Master of Arts . He was admitted to the Paris bar in 1951 and received his doctorate on American law from the Paris Law School in 1954. He worked for the law firm Badinter, Bredin and Partner , which he co-founded in 1965, until he was appointed Minister of Justice in 1981. In 1966 he was appointed professor and taught in Dijon, Besançon, Amiens and finally from 1974 at the Sorbonne , since 1994 as emeritus .

Her marriage to actress Anne Vernon , which had existed since 1957, was divorced by mutual agreement in 1965. In 1966 he married the philosopher Élisabeth Badinter, daughter of the founder of the large advertising agency Publicis Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet , with whom he has three children.

Abolition of the death penalty

In June 1972 Badinter lost his defense in court and witnessed the guillotination of his client Roger Bontems, who was sentenced to death together with his accomplice Claude Buffet for the murder of two hostages on the occasion of an attempted escape from prison, although it was proven that Bontems denied Had not committed murder. Badinter turned from a critic to a vehement opponent of the death penalty. From then on he often defended accused who faced the death penalty and was nicknamed "Monsieur Abolition". In June 1977, through a memorable plea against the death penalty, he managed to avert the death penalty for the child murderer Patrick Henri, who was sentenced to life imprisonment , against public pressure .

François Mitterrand promised the abolition of the death penalty in the 1981 election campaign and, after his election victory, made Badinter, who had already supported him in his first election campaign in 1974, Minister of Justice. A few months after his appointment, on September 18, 1981, he won a three-quarters majority for the abolition of the death penalty with a committed speech to the National Assembly :

«Utiliser against the terrorist la peine de mort, c'est, pour une democratie, faire sienne les valeurs de ces derniers. »

"A democracy that carries out the death penalty against terrorists adopts the latter's values."

- Robert Badinter : Speech to the Assemblée Nationale

In addition to the socialists, members of the opposition, including Jacques Chirac and Philippe Séguin , voted for his bill, which was approved by the Senate on September 30, 1981. On February 17, 1986, France also ratified the sixth additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights .

Badinter's decisive rejection of the death penalty was put to an extraordinary test in 1983 by the trial of Klaus Barbie, who had signed the order for the deportation of Badinter's father Simon in 1943 in Lyon. Simon Badinter, who emigrated to Paris as a young Russian-Jewish student, had been deported to the east and died in the Sobibor extermination camp; his son narrowly escaped destruction. "Forty years later, his son held the deportation order with Barbie's signature in his hands in his Paris office - and he found himself confirmed in his decision to give the perpetrator a legal process beyond all doubt."

On February 19, 2007, at Badinter's initiative, the death penalty was included in the French constitution . The members of the National Assembly and Senate , who met in Congress , passed the amendment with 828 to 26 votes. Now it says in Article 66-1: “Nobody may be sentenced to death”. This constitutional amendment made it possible to ratify the 13th Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights on October 10, 2007, which prohibits the death penalty without exception, including in times of war.

Badinter is still a committed opponent of the death penalty and advocates its abolition internationally.

Political career

From June 23, 1981 to February 18, 1986 Robert Badinter was Minister of Justice. During his tenure, the "Cour de sûreté de l'État", a special court for "subversive" criminals, and military courts in peacetime were abolished. Further reforms of the judiciary in the sense of equality before the law and civil liberties followed:

• Citizens can turn directly to the European Court of Human Rights ,
• Vichy regime's homosexual discriminatory laws were abolished,
• Strengthened the rights of victims of road accidents and
• non-custodial substitute sentences.

In March 1986 he was appointed President of the Constitutional Council (Conseil Constitutionel) by François Mitterrand and held this position until March 1995. His political efforts were aimed at developing this council into a constitutional court . In 1993, the very restrictive bill on immigration and asylum law ( loi Pasqua ) by the right-wing conservative interior minister Charles Pasqua , which had been rejected as non-constitutional in several paragraphs, caused a public controversy.

From September 24, 1995, he was senator for the Hauts-de-Seine department, which borders on Paris . He was re-elected in 2004 and his term ended on September 30, 2011 after he had not run again.

He worked in an advisory capacity on the new Romanian constitution, which came into force in 1991 and is inspired in many ways by the French constitution.

On 27 August 1991 he was elected president of the European Community used Badinter Commission appointed an arbitration committee to clarify legal issues related to the conflicts in the successor states of Yugoslavia .

The southern French city of Périgueux renamed the Esplanade du Théâtre on September 25, 2009 in his presence in Esplanade Robert-Badinter . 2003 awarded him the University of Zagreb , the honorary doctorate , 2009, the University of Neuchâtel / Neuenburg and 2010, the State University of Moldova .

Memberships

• 2006 American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2009 American Philosophical Society

bibliography

• L'Exécution (1973), trial report in the Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems murder case.
• Condorcet, 1743–1794 (1988), with Élisabeth Badinter.
• Une autre justice (1989).
• Libres et égaux: L'émancipation des Juifs (1789-1791) (1989).
• La prison républicaine, 1871-1914 (1992).
• C.3.3 - Oscar Wilde ou l'injustice (1995).
• Un antisémitisme ordinaire (1997).
• L'Abolition , (2000), on his fight for the abolition of the death penalty in France. The English translation was published in 2008 by Northeastern University Press, Boston , and is entitled Abolition: One Man's Battle Against the Death Penalty , ISBN 978-1-55553-692-3 .
• Une constitution européenne (2002). The German translation was published by Carl Heymanns Verlag in 2013under the title Robert Badinter, a constitution for Europe on the occasion of the award of the Carl Heymann Prize
• Le rôle du juge dans la société moderne (2003).
• Le plus grand bien (2004), on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Civil Code .
• Contre la peine de mort (2006).
• Les Épines et les Roses , Editions Fayard , Paris 2011 (autobiography, review: Alexandra Kemmerer: My father's desk murderer is also entitled to due process. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. June 28, 2011 (147), p. 32).
• Le travail et la loi , together with Antoine Lyon-Caen, Editions Fayard, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-213-68689-9
• Opera libretto Claude after Victor Hugo Claude Gueux , composition: Thierry Escaich , world premiere: March 2013 Opéra de Lyon .

biography

• Paul Cassia: Robert Badinter. Un juriste en politique . Éditions Fayard, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-213-65139-2 (Review: Alexandra Kemmerer: If need be, he will write his own European draft constitution. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. January 2, 2010 (No. 1), P. 32).
• Pauline Dreyfus: Robert Badinter ou l'épreuve de la justice . Éditions du Toucan, Boulogne 2009, ISBN 978-2-8100-0312-9 .
• La peine de mort - Robert Badinter . Four CDs including excerpts from the historical debate on the abolition of the death penalty before the National Assembly. éditions Frémeaux & Associés , 2010.

Web links

Commons : Robert Badinter  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Robert Badinter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Robert Badinter's blog archive: [2]
• Badinter on a website with famous French lawyers Archive: [3]

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1. ↑ Christophe Boltanski , “  Faurisson, négationniste impénitent face à Badinter  ”, in Liberation , March 13, 2007.
2. ^ "  Lyon - Commémoration de la rafle de la rue Sainte-Catherine  ", in francetvinfo.fr , 10 February 2013.
3. ↑ Baudouin Eschapasse, "  Les Savoyards m'ont sauvé la vie  ", in Le Point , September 27, 2012.
4. ^ Catalog entry for the doctoral thesis "Les conflits de lois en matière de responsabilité civile dans le droit des États-Unis" (French) in Catalog du Système Universitaire de Documentation
5. ↑ Biography at the United Nations (eng.)
6. ^ Yvan Foucart, Anne Vernon: L'élégance… A touch of France lesgensducinema.com , April 2, 2009
7. ^ Justine Francioli, Robert Badinter, biographie d'un modèle républicain , nonfiction.fr , October 13, 2009
8. ↑ CV in Badinter's blog. (French)
9. ^ Robert Badinter [18. September 1981]: J'ai l'honneur (...) de demander à l'assemblée nationale l'abolition de la peine de mort. ( French ). Journal Officiel de la République Française, p. 1141, 0429-3088.
10. ↑ Alexandra Kemmerer: My father's desk murderer is also entitled to due process . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 147 , June 28, 2011, p. 32 .
11. ↑ Loi constitutionnelle sur l'abolition de la peine de mort (French)
12. ↑ List of signatory states to the Council of Europe
13. ^ Paul Cassia, Il est temps de faire du Conseil constitutionnel une véritable juridiction in Le Monde March 15, 2010
14. ↑ Short biography at the Sénat (French)
15. ^ Report on the development of the Romanian constitution on senat.fr (French)
16. ↑ Robert Badinter Honorary Doctorate ( Memento of the original from May 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Website of the Croatian Embassy in France, April 17, 2003. 
17. ↑ Robert Badinter Honorary Doctor Internet presence of the French Embassy in Moldova April 2010 Archive: [1]
18. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter B. (PDF; 1.2 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved April 15, 2018 . 
19. ^ Member History: Robert Badinter. American Philosophical Society, accessed April 15, 2018 (with a short biography).