The old lion has closed his eyes, the world of justice is in great mourning and the robes of lawyers are blacker than ever. Henri Leclerc died at the age of 90, on Saturday 31st August in Paris, after seventy years at the bar and as many years of tenacious defence of liberties. Mᵉ Leclerc was one of the last giants of his time, and when the rumour spread, in the courts or tribunals, that he was going to testify, colleagues, magistrates, students, discreetly slipped into the courtroom to learn from the old master.
There he was, with his kind smile, a heavy and reassuring silhouette in his shabby dress, with his white hair, his warm, confident, friendly voice, flowing like a river; Leclerc did not beg, he spoke, like a friend, he confided his doubts, his certainties, his questions, with simple words and with great kindness. We listened to him, we fell with him in emotion, and often in anger, against justice, against injustice. “Even in the most hateful environments, she manages to envelop the room with her curves, with her whole body, she is physical, Mᵉ Thierry Lévy, another great lawyer with a colder style, who died in 2017, said of him. He says something to the jurors: “Here is a brave man! Whoever he is defending can’t be that bad.”
But the old lawyer was also formidable, and his cross-examinations were merciless. He waited for the witness, the expert, or the policeman to respond, report in hand, sucking on the side of his glasses, mindful of this principle of defence which requires a lawyer to ask only questions to which he knows the answer. The unfortunate man on the grill quickly became entangled in his contradictions, and the old lion dealt him a terrible blow with his claw which left him trembling and bloodless, ruining his testimony forever. Henri Leclerc sat quietly with a half-smile, waiting for the next one.
The young Henri first encountered the law at the age of 11, in October 1945, after a strong anger on the part of his father, during the trial of Pierre Laval. The father, a public prosecutor, hated the mastermind of the collaboration with Germany, but was outraged by the parody of the trial of the former head of government, shot after a suicide attempt. The press release of the Attorney General, “Mr. Laval’s days are no longer in danger”Before dragging him half-dead to the firing squad, he had seized the child.
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