Robert Badinter, the lawyer, academic and former justice minister who spearheaded France’s historic abolition of the death penalty, will be honoured at the Panthéon on October 9 – 44 years to the day after the landmark bill he authored was signed into law. Badinter, who died in February 2024 at the age of 95, will join Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Simone Veil and other illustrious citizens buried in the vast domed mausoleum that dominates the Left Bank of Paris. The late minister embodied France’s fight against capital punishment. His eloquent plea before the National Assembly on September 17, 1981, marked a turning point in modern French history. “Tomorrow, thanks to you, French justice will no longer be a justice that kills,” he told French lawmakers. “Tomorrow, thanks to you, there will no longer be, to our common shame, furtive executions at dawn, under the black canopy, in French prisons. Tomorrow, the bloody pages of our justice will be turned.”
France pays 'solemn' tribute to former justice minister Robert Badinter
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