What's happened
France pays tribute to Robert Badinter, the former justice minister who led the campaign to abolish the death penalty in France.
Why it matters
The death of Robert Badinter is significant as he played a key role in ending the death penalty in France and was a respected intellectual figure in the country.
What the papers say
The New York Times and France 24 provide detailed coverage of Robert Badinter's role in abolishing the death penalty in France, while The Guardian and AP News focus on the national mourning and recognition for Badinter's work and legacy.
How we got here
Robert Badinter's period as justice minister launched a whole raft of very important reforms that his successors carried on, and he is one of those dominant figures in French politics.
More on these topics
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Robert Badinter is a French lawyer, politician, and author who enacted the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, while serving as Minister of Justice under François Mitterrand.
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country consisting of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories.
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François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France.
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul.