Ludovic Trarieux
Jacques Ludovic Trarieux (30 November 1840 in Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, Charente – 13 March 1904) was a French Republican statesman, lawyer, prominent Dreyfusard, and pioneer of international human rights.
On 6 April 1879 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and became a member of the Opportunist Republican parliamentary group, Gauche républicaine, where he was quickly noticed, making numerous interventions in debates.
As a member of the Republican Left and soon President of the group of the Moderate Left (the most moderate in the High Assembly), at first he adopted some very conservative positions in cases on social laws (modification of article 1780 concerning service contracts, arbitration between employers and employees, the work of women and juveniles) and, in his report, rejected the bill of modification of the law on professional trade unions.
However, he fought energetically against an amendment that aimed to transfer infringements concerning the detention of explosives to the War Council, which had become more repressive, since it had refused to allow the removal of common law jurisdiction from these courts.
He adopted a law that allowed more extensive opportunities of appeal in criminal cases, better compensation for injury suffered by victims of miscarriages of justice, and came up against a "legal event" that had just rocked France: one cold day, twenty-one days earlier, Captain Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted of treason, dishonourably discharged and, since 18 January, had been waiting on Ile de Re to be transported to Devil's Island in French Guiana.
While Minister of Justice, Trarieux obtained copies of Dreyfus' writing and discovered discrepancies between the convict's handwriting and that of the author of the document that had established his guilt.
Just before Esterhazy’s trial on 8 January 1898, Trarieux published an open letter in "Le Temps", addressed to the War Minister, Billot, to denounce "the parody of justice".
After several months of tireless activity, having united the support of a thousand people, Trarieux and his friends convened a general assembly, in the hall of the "Sociétés Savantes", in Paris.
[1] It was there that, on 4 June 1898, was finally formed the Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, "Human Rights League"), of which Trarieux was proclaimed President and entrusted with the drawing up of its statutes.
Cavaignac had to resign on 5 September 1898 and nearly one year day-for-day after the constitution of the League of Human Rights, on 3 June 1899, the Supreme Court quashed the Dreyfus judgment of 1894 and referred the case to the War Council in Rennes.
