When he abolished the guillotine in 1981, Robert Badinter became France’s most unpopular minister. But after that, the lawyer and politician became a moral authority whose reputation radiated far beyond France.
Robert Badinter in an undated photo.
Michel Baret / Gamma-Rapho / Getty
On September 17, 1981, Robert Badinter had been Minister of Justice for less than four months. But he gave a speech to the French National Assembly that is now considered a French cultural asset. For over two hours, Badinter explained why the death penalty should be abolished in France. A majority of MPs approved the Socialist government’s proposal just thirteen days later – and by October death by guillotine in France was history.
What is celebrated today as a great achievement brought Badinter a lot of discredit back then. For months he was considered the most unpopular minister in President François Mitterrand’s socialist government. Because many French people, and especially the conservatives, were against the abolition of the death penalty. The main argument was that it served as a deterrent, and that this socialist minister was ensuring that the French justice system became weak.
Hiding from the Nazis in the mountain village
As a lawyer, Robert Badinter had fought – not always successfully – against the execution of the death penalty on his client. In the Ministry of Justice, the fight for a fairer justice system and humane prison conditions became his main concern. In just under five years, he abolished special jurisdiction (e.g. for the military), set up the institution of victim support and ensured that prisoners had access to a television in their cells.
Over time, his popularity ratings also improved – and they only continued to increase until his death on Friday night. Because Badinter, who lived to the age of 95, was not only a politician and lawyer in his life, but also a writer and the longer he lived, the more he became a moral authority.
Robert Badinter was born in Paris on March 30, 1928, the son of Jewish immigrants. His family was well integrated and placed great value on education. His father was already close to the socialists. Thanks to fake IDs, he, his mother and his brother escaped arrest by the German occupiers. They went into hiding in a village in the Savoy.
His father, who fled to France from the pogroms in Bessarabia (in today’s Moldova) in 1919, was deported to the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943 and never returned. This experience was formative for Badinter. In the early 1940s, Badinter told “Le Monde” in 2018 that he didn’t even understand what it meant to be Jewish: Since then he has been French, a French Jew, and that is inseparable for him.
An international reputation
After the war, he first studied sociology and then law. From 1950 he worked as a lawyer. Badinter initially represented actors and journalists in copyright issues before turning to serious criminal law cases. After his time in politics, his reputation as a lawyer of integrity and incorruptibility earned him an appointment to the French Constitutional Court.
He was also perceived as its president abroad: for example by a certain Mikhail Gorbachev, who asked him to think about a new Russian constitution together with other renowned lawyers. He also chaired a commission set up by the European Community to deal with legal issues following the breakup of Yugoslavia – it was even named after him.
He had long since reached retirement age when, at the age of 67, he ran for a seat in the Senate, the small chamber of the French Parliament, for the Socialists. He sat there for 16 years. Even afterwards he was considered a highly respected commentator on current events. In 2021, Badinter stated to the NZZ with a certain satisfaction that France was the 36th country in which the death penalty was abolished in 1981. Now there are already 120.