Jean-Marc Fedida

in Hommage à Léo Matarasso, Séminaire sur le droit des peuples, Cahier réalisé par CEDETIM-LIDLP-CEDIDELP, Février 1999

When the humble judicial function, so vilely vacant, of the lawyer meets the ideas of the time, it is the world that becomes a courtroom. The word of the litigant, freed from its dusty enclosures, becomes political; it breaks down the walls and bars of our brothers’ prisons. The word, handled by the defender in the judicial enclosure, is like a wild beast in the circus ring: it sits wisely on a spangled stool, and, at the slightest snap of the whip, it takes off and springs into the hoops of fire. The Lawyer, in court, is a tamer, his eloquence is the product of his tricks, he makes bears dance, tigers lie down and lions leap from hoop to hoop.
Outside the audience, the tamer is naked and the beasts are free. His robe no longer serves as armor and the beasts’ claws are sharp. That is why there are so many who, instead of the discomfort of the danger of free speech, prefer the quiet hearing of justice.
There are so many today who think that being a lawyer is simply a matter of appearing before the courts and tribunals, and that once this task is accomplished, the craftsman can fold his trade.
For me, Léo Matarasso was equally at ease in and out of the circus. He mastered his wild animals to perfection, they obeyed him with their fingertips, whether under the gaze of a judge or under that of an assembly that had come to listen to him plead for the rights of the people.
Thus the words of Henri Alleg were given freedom by Léo; thus Ben Barka and Henri Curiel, both assassinated, had, during their struggle and beyond, a defender commensurate with their causes. Léo and I felt that the role of the lawyer was not only to be played out in the courtroom, but that the courtroom was everywhere where there were ideas to be saved, freedoms to be won; it could be, of course, the bar, but also a kitchen table, or a corridor, in short anywhere where his presence created a space for conviction.
I owe this to Léo Matarasso, as well as having agreed, along with Georges Kiejman, to be one of my two moral patrons at the Paris Bar, as required at the time by the Ordre des Avocats. Léo did this with all the benevolent attention he paid to causes and people.

Fedida, Jean-Marc, Lawyer

in:

<strong>Hommage à Léo Matarasso, Séminaire sur le droit des peuples
Cahier réalisé par CEDETIM-LIDLP-CEDIDELP, Février 1999
L’Harmattan, Paris, 2004</strong>