Robert Badinter
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Robert Badinter (born March 30, 1928) is a French politician (after being a high-profile criminal lawyer and a university professor in Law). He belongs to the French Socialist Party and is currently a senator for the Hauts-de-Seine département.
He is married to the feminist writer Élisabeth Badinter.
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[edit] Action as a minister
He is mainly known for his struggle against Death penalty, which he managed to have abolished in France on the 30th of September 1981, as Minister of Justice. During his mandate, he also passed several laws, such as
- Abolition of the "juridictions d'exception" ("exceptional trials"), like the Cour de Sûreté de l'État ("Security Court of the State") and the military tribunals in time of peace.
- Consolidation of private liberties (such as the lowering of the age of consent for homosexual sex to that for heterosexual sex)
- Improval of the Rights of Victims (any convicted person can make an appeal before the European Commission for Human Rights and the European Court for Human Rights)
- Development of sentences without a loss of liberty (like general interest work for minor petty crimes)
[edit] Struggle for abolition of the death penalty
Badinter's struggle against the death penalty began after Roger Bontems's execution, on November 28, 1972. Along with Claude Buffet, Bontems had taken a prison guard and a nurse hostage during the 1971 revolt in Clairvaux Prison. During the police storm, Buffet sliced the throat of the hostages. Badinter was the attorney for Bontems, and although it was established during the trial that Buffet alone was the murderer, the jury still decided to sentence both men to death. Applying the death penalty to a person who had not killed outraged Badinter to the point that he dedicated himself to the abolition of the death penalty.
In this context, and as a lawyer, he accepted to defend Patrick Henry. In January 1976, 8-year old Philipe Bertrand was kidnapped. Patrick Henry was suspected very soon, but released because of a lack of proof. He gave interviews on television, saying that those who kidnapped and killed children deserved death. A few days later, he was again arrested, and shown young Philippe's corpse hidden in a blanket under his bed. Badinter and Robert Bocquillon defended Henry, making a case not in favour of Henry, but against the death penalty. The defence won, and Henry was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The death penalty was again applied in France later on, but it became a public matter. Between 1976 and 1981, three people were executed.
[edit] Political career
In 1981, François Mitterrand was elected president, and Badinter was nominated Minister of Justice. Among his first actions was a bill to the French Parliament that abolished the death penalty for all crimes, which the Parliament voted after heated debate on 30 September 1981. He remained a minister until 18 February 1986).
From March 1986 to March 1995 he was president of the French Constitutional Council, and since the 24th of September 1995 he has been a senator for the Hauts-de-Seine département.
In 1991, he was appointed by the Councel of Ministers of the European Community as a member of the Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on the former Yugoslavia. He was elected as President of the Commission by the four other members, all Presidents of Constitutional Courts in the European Community. The Arbitration Commission has rendered eleven advices on "major legal questions" arisen by the split of the SFRY.[1]
He continues his struggle against the death penalty in China and the United States of America, petitioning officials and militating in the World Congress against Death Penalty.
He recently opposed the adhesion of Turkey to the European Union, on the grounds that Turkey might not be able to follow the rules of the Union. Also, the geographic setting of Turkey makes it a bad candidate according to Badinter: "Why should Europe be neighbour with Georgia, Armenia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, the former Caucasus, that is, the most dangerous region of these times? Nothing in the project of the founding fathers was predicting this extension, I dare not say this expansion."
[edit] Bibliography
- L'exécution (1973), about the trial of Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems
- Condorcet, 1743-1794 (1988), co-authored 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), recounting his fight for the abolition of the death penalty in France
- Une constitution européenne (2002)
- Le rôle du juge dans la société moderne (2003)
