Thierry Lévy's own assessments of the French criminal justice system, which he shared frequently through the print media and, especially during his later years, in television debates, placed him firmly at the liberal-left end of the political spectrum, however.
He and his two elder siblings grew up, as one commentator puts it, living in a beautiful house in the [affluent] Bois de Boulogne [quarter of Paris].
[6] Paul Lévy had built his career as a nationalist anti-German and at times polemical journalist during the build up to the First World War, writing for publications such as L'Aurore, Le Journal and L'Intransigeant.
Thierry Lévy's mother, born Rose Salomon Nathan (1906-1997), came from eastern France, was a qualified lawyer who later built a career as a respected economist-statistician.
In response to the government antisemitic legislation that followed, Paul Lévy handed over the keys to the office of his political weekly to its former editor-in-chief, Maurice Blanchot, whose journalistic record was similarly nationalistic and anti-German.
It was Blanchot who warned his proprietor of the latter's imminent arrest, as a result of which Lévy and his wife escaped to the "forbidden zone" in the south, and successfully hid themselves.
[5] After returning to Paris, Rose Lévy, who was herself a Jewish convert to Catholicism lost little time in arranging for the couple's three children to be received into the Catholic church.
The previous year the owners had been ordered by a Paris court to pay damages of 80,000 francs "plus interest" in respect of a libel claim brought by or on behalf of Jacques Foccart, a government minister.
Continuing media coverage of the verdict and subsequent execution provided a platform that Lévy used to repeat his demands for improvements in French prison conditions.
[5] He defended the Halfen Brothers, two alleged members of the Action directe (armed terrorist group) after they had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a serious shooting incident in 1983.
The case concerned a book of interviews, Ce que je n'ai pas pu dire (loosely, 'Things I could not say [at the time]'), which included the assertion that on 31 May 1983 Claude Halfen had been a member of the Action directe commando team which had killed two policemen and seriously injured a third, as part of what the media were calling by now the "Trudaine Avenue massacre", even though he had not himself fired a shot.
The former investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière was acquitted on the defamation charge by a court of first instance in 2011, but Lévy lodged an appeal on behalf of his client.
Knobelspiess, who was driving the car, stated consistently that he never had any homicidal intent, and had been convicted in 1983 purely in account of a long-standing vendetta on the part of certain police officers.
[20][21] In respect of the fourth case, which was lost against the Paris-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (La LICRA), Lewis refused advice that he should appeal the verdict, asserting by way of explanation that he had no confidence in the French justice system.
[22] In 2003 he represented Eva Joly, who as an investigating magistrate with a reputation for juridical anti-corruption activism had acquired a certain number of enemies in high places, faced a determined attempt by an alliance of senior lawyers to block the sale and distribution of her book Est-ce dans ce monde-là que nous voulons vivre?
The very name of the book, in combination with the identity of its author, set off a rattling of skeletons in cupboards, notably among those involved in aspects of the so-called Elf Petroleum scandal and its lengthy investigation.
Differences had arisen during acquisition of Seuil by the Martinière Group during 2004: the court was to determine that serious insinuations had been published and Cherki had been forced to resign his directorship.
He was, in addition, ordered to arrange for the publication of the court judgement at his own expense in "Nouvel Observateur" (as "L'Obs" was known before 2014), the news magazine in which the originating libel had appeared in June 2004.
[28] On 2008 he secured a release from culpability for Roger Cukierman in a tangled "public injury" case brought by Alain Krivine on behalf of the Revolutionary Communist League.
[31][32] Representing Utopia Cinemas, in 2010 Thierry Lévy secured the rejection of an action launched by the Association culturelle juive des Alpilles.
[37] Other forceful characters with whom Lévy not infrequently clashed in television debates included Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Alain Bauer and Nicolas Sarkozy.
[38] Over the years he also wrote a succession of short snappy essays setting forth his objections to various aspects of the political correctness which, he believed deleterious to modern French society.