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 far right as well as for his own involvement in right wing politics. Early life Jacques Isorni was the son of Antoine Isorni, a native of Locarno who emigrated to France to make his way an artist in the fashionable Rive Gauche area of Paris, and Marguerite Feine, the daughter of a Catholic family who embraced republicanism and was noted as a Dreyfusard. His parents married only three weeks after they first met and Feine's whirlwind marriage to an immigrant scandalised her traditionalist family. The young Isorni was raised in the high end Faubourg Saint-Germain district, although he found himself a regular target for scorn from his schoolmates due to his Italian roots and unusual surname. Isorni followed his father politically by associating himself with conservatism and whilst attending the Ecole Alsacienne he became involved in groups affiliated to Action Française. Legal career before 1945 He studied a joint honours degree in law and literature at the University of Paris and was sworn in as a lawyer in 1931, making him the youngest practising lawyer in France at the time. He quickly built a reputation as a highly innovative lawyer with a high success rate in his cases. Following the outbreak of World War II Isorni had a brief period of admiration for Charles de Gaulle, before transferring his allegiance to Philippe Pétain, arguing that after the Fall of France Pétain was the country's best hope. A law passed by the Vichy regime however briefly debarred Isorni from continuing in the legal profession as all who were not fully French were barred from practising although before long exceptions were made for "prominent" lawyers and he returned to the bar. Post-war political activity 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.