The perils of political lawfare are in the spotlight at Paris as the court appeal of the rightist National Rally leader, Marine Le Pen, gets under way. Madame Le Pen was earlier this year convicted of misusing European Parliament funds to hire staffers for her party. The partisan animus behind the charges led even the leftists of Jacobin magazine to gripe that the case could backfire and provide “a propaganda coup for her party.”

The attempt by the French government to turn the power of the judiciary against a critic and opponent marks the flaws of lawfare as an extension of politics by other means, to borrow Carl von Clausewitz’s formulation. As seen in the Democrats’ legal pursuit of President Trump, and in Israeli authorities’ prosecution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s better to let the voters sort out these questions at the polls.

Le Monde, in an editorial reckoning that Madame Le Pen’s conviction in April “swept through French political life like a thunderstorm,” pointed to prior cases in which “the judiciary was accused of overreach” involving a “prominent figure.” Feature, say, the cases of two former premiers ensnared by lawfare: Alain Juppé, in 2004, over “fake jobs” at Paris’ city hall, and François Fillon, in 2017, for hiring his wife.

A former president, Jacques Chirac, endured similar legal harassment after he left office in 2007. Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, has faced multiple prosecutions and been convicted in three separate cases. As for François Bayrou, the centrist leader was charged on behalf of his own party with the same offenses as Marine Le Pen, until finally cleared for want of evidence in 2024 after a seven-year process. 

The main issue with lawfare à la française is that prosecution against conservative or rightwing leaders is usually expedited and tends to lead to harsh punishment, while delays and indulgence seem to be more common when it comes to liberals or left-wingers. The leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon faces several legal issues, though notably he himself has not been formally charged so far in most of these cases.  

Which brings us back to Madame Le Pen. She startled observers at the beginning  of her appeal by appearing to concede the charges against her. The offense, though, “had not been intentional,” Politico reports Madame Le Pen saying. She insisted that “if a crime has been committed” then “so be it, but I want the court to know that we never felt like we had committed even the slightest offense.”

It’s not our intent here to weigh the merits of Madame Le Pen’s legal strategy, but one can certainly admire the rightist leader’s pluck. By, in effect, escalating the case into the court of public opinion, her arguments underscore the political motivation that appears to be lurking beneath the prosecution. Even so, this shift in legal strategy could raise the risk of Madame Le Pen being barred from running in the next presidential election. 

Madame Le Pen, apparently undaunted, opened the appeal proceedings by arguing that her “only line of defense for this appeal will be the same as it was during the initial trial: telling the truth.” She said that because “the case will be reset and judged by new magistrates,” it was her hope “to be better heard and to convince them of my innocence.” She’s certainly hoed a long row to get here.

As things have developed, in any event, most political observers note that the more Madame Le Pen is legally harassed, the higher she climbs in the polls. In the case she is barred from the ballot, it is her heir apparent Jordan Bardella who will run in her stead. Polls credit him with an even wider support and even point to a victory in the second, decisive, round in the presidential election of 2027. It would not be nothing.