I-House Alumnus Robert Badinter ’49 Enters the French Panthéon
Robert Badinter (1928-2024), the distinguished lawyer and former French Minister of Justice renowned for abolishing the death penalty in his country, was honored with induction into the Panthéon in Paris on October 9.
Badinter, who lived at International House while studying at Columbia University in 1948-49, joined such historic figures as Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Simone Veil with the honor, and is the subject of an exhibition at the national mausoleum through March 8: Robert Badinter, la justice au cœur.
Best known for his key role in ridding France of the guillotine in 1981, Badinter was famed for decriminalizing homosexuality, advocating for improving conditions in prisons, and the enhancement of citizen’s access to justice. He also worked toward France’s recognizing the right for any litigant to appeal to the European Commission and Court of Human Rights.
“As he enters the Panthéon, we hear his voice advocating for these great, essential, and unfinished battles,” said French President Emmanuel Macron at the induction ceremony. “These are causes that transcend centuries.”
The son of Jewish immigrants escaping Tsarist Russia who later died in the Holocaust, Badinter dedicated his life to equality and the protection of human rights.
Following World War II and his undergraduate studies in law and literature at the Paris School of Law and the Sorbonne, Badinter received a fellowship from the French government to study in the United States and earned a Master of Arts degree from Columbia while living at I-House.
The Panthéon exhibition “highlights the genesis of a commitment, marked very early on by the experience of anti-Semitism during the Second World War, the family legacy, his fight for the abolition of the death penalty and his other major struggles as a politician.”
