THORNS AND ROSES
On October 9th, 2025, Robert Badinter entered the Panthéon. A lawyer, a man, a moral conscience.
Before him stood his mentors, Zola, Victor Hugo, Condorcet, all convinced that justice must give humanity a chance to become better.
Since the historic reform of our justice system, his name seemed destined to join that “secular sanctuary”, where the great figures of the Republic rest.
But this tribute extends beyond the man himself; it touches the very idea of humanity.
Badinter was one of those who never defended crime, he defended life.
His family, from Bessarabia, now Moldova, carried within its blood a profound love for a universal France.
His father, Simon, a student in Moscow before the October Revolution, spoke perfect French, nourished by the words of Hugo and Stendhal.
This lineage was no accident, it was a transmission of ideals.
The young Badinter learned early that justice is not an institution, but a moral breath; that law is not a fortress, but a tool for revealing the unity behind every human breath.
And on this 1 November 2025, as his name now echoes beneath the vault of the Panthéon, his spirit still whispers to us :
Justice is great only when it still believes in mankind.
Art is the reverberation of an impermanent life.
Human beings come and go quickly, yet they leave behind works that stand as monuments to their passing.
They are our footprints on the sands of time, our whispers against oblivion.
From Michelangelo’s David to prehistoric cave paintings, from a child’s clumsy finger painting to a graffiti scrawled on a train station wall, all echo the same human cry : I was here.
To create is to extend a hand to the invisible.
It is to tell the world : Look, here is a fragment of my humanity.
And when that offering meets another gaze, something unseen occurs, solitude cracks open.
We believe we create artworks, but in truth, it is the artworks that connect us.
They dissolve the boundaries of language, revealing what we once knew before birth: there is no separation.
We are, and have always been, one.
The musician Charles Mingus once said:
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Creativity is making the complicated simple, extraordinarily simple.”
This truth runs through art, science, politics, and law alike.
Craftsmen, artists, lawyers, thinkers, men and women, all shape the world through their tools, their experiences, and their knowledge.
Our shared duty : to make life extraordinarily simple, not by diminishing it, but by clarifying it.
To be a lawyer is to take part in that same work of art.
It means to listen, to guide, to support humanity in order to defend life.
It is not merely to plead, but to repair, to reconnect, sometimes even to redeem.
For a lawyer is not an orator in robes, but an artisan of truth, a bearer of light between law and humanity.
He constantly asks himself: How can I do better?
Better understand, better serve, better love.
That, perhaps, is the true art of imagining wholeness : to remember that law is only an instrument, while justice is a relationship.
One day, in a garden, a rose complained to a thorn.
“You prick, you wound, you frighten everyone away. Because of you, no one dares to approach me.”
The thorn replied softly :
“Without me, my dear, they would pluck you without hesitation. I am your pain, but also your protection.”
The wind, a silent witness, whispered:
“It is in the fragile dance of your opposites that beauty is born.”
The great trials of life reveal our humanity and our uniqueness.
Adversity does not destroy us, it shapes us.
Imagine. Become better. Remain whole. Inspire.
And remember : In life, we have had man worries… most of which never happened.
We invent countless stories that never come to pass.
Because in truth, we are one.
🌹 End and beginning ...