Jacques Isorni

Jacques Isorni (1911–1995) was a French lawyer and memoirist. He came to prominence for his role as defending counsel in a number of cases involving prominent figures on the

Early life

Jacques Isorni was the son of Antoine Isorni, a native of

Isorni came to wider prominence in the immediate post-war years when he was chosen to defend Robert Brasillach and then Pétain himself in their trials for collaboration with Nazi Germany. However Isorni's earlier success rates deserted him as not only were both men found guilty both were also sentenced to death, albeit with the sentence commuted to life in the latter case on account of the Marshal's age and fragile mental state.^[5]

Nonetheless Isorni quickly became associated with a new tendency that sought to defend the reputation of Pétain and the Vichy period and he became a regular writer for René Malliavin's Ecrits de Paris, a journal dedicated to this cause.^[6] Isorni helped establish, and became leader of, the Union des nationaux indépendants et républicains, a political party that supported Petainisme and he ran as a candidate for this group in Paris during the 1951 elections. The group was fairly disparate, being largely a fairly loose coalition of many tiny far right groups that had sprung up in the immediate aftermath of the war.^[7]

Isorni had initially been reluctant to enter electoral politics but was eventually persuaded to stand as a candidate by Pierre-Étienne Flandin, who pointed out that Isorni was one of the few prominent Petainists who was not barred from candidacy.^[8] Whilst campaigning Isorni had a young Jean-Marie Le Pen as his personal bodyguard.^[9] The party failed to capture high levels of support but did manage to get four deputies elected, Isorni among them.^[9] Following his election Communist Party members petitioned the Assembly to debar Isorni from membership because of his Vichyist past but the move was rejected.^[10] In parliament Isorni came under the wing of the Parti Paysan, a rural conservative group that subsequently formed part of the National Centre of Independents and Peasants, and became known as one of its most vocal, as well as its most right-wing, members.^[8] That same year Isorni was also the driving force behind the Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshal Pétain, a group that campaign for the "Hero of Verdun" to be released from prison.^[9]

A later case saw Isorni defending General Raoul Salan, the leader of the Organisation armée secrète, on charges of treason. Although Salan was found guilty of the charge Isorni was able to ensure that he was given a life sentence rather than the standard execution.^[11] By this point he had largely left active politics, although he would emerge from time to time to lend his support to electoral candidates, notably François Mitterrand in 1965 and Jean Royer in 1974.^[12] Whilst maintaining rightist views he was by this time identified almost exclusively with anti-Gaullism rather than with any one tendency.^[13]

References