Robert Badinter, a French lawyer and former justice minister who led the fight to abolish the death penalty in France and became one of the country’s most respected intellectual figures, died early Friday. He was 95.
His death was confirmed by Aude Napoli, his spokeswoman. She did not say where he died.
“He is a touchstone for many generations,” President Emmanuel Macron told reporters on a visit to Bordeaux on Friday, hailing Mr. Badinter as a “sage” and a “conscience” for France.
“The nation owes him a lot,” Mr. Macron said, adding that the government would organize a national tribute.
Mr. Badinter spent decades as an esteemed defense lawyer. But he was best known for enacting the 1981 law that abolished capital punishment in France, one of his very first acts as justice minister in the Socialist government of President François Mitterrand.
“Tomorrow, thanks to you, France’s justice will no longer be a justice that kills,” Mr. Badinter told lawmakers in 1981 in a fiery hourslong speech defending the law.
He achieved this in the face of wide public support for the death penalty at the time. The fight against capital punishment stood at the core of his lifelong defense of human rights against oppression and cruelty. It was also under Mr. Badinter’s watch, in 1982, that France decriminalized homosexuality.
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