Camille Aynes and Eleonora Bottini blog:

It was a political bombshell. On Monday, 31 March 2025, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally) in France, was convicted of misappropriation of public funds in the so-called “parliamentary assistants” case. She was sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court to four years of imprisonment, including two years to be served, a fine of 100,000 euros, and a five-year period of ineligibility to hold public office immediately enforceable.

This unprecedented judgment jeopardizes the very possibility for the leading candidate in the upcoming 2027 presidential election to run for office. While neither Marine Le Pen nor the broader public appeared surprised by the conviction itself, given the underlying facts of the case, two elements of the ruling proved entirely unexpected. The first was the imposition of the additional sanction of a ban on standing for public office. The second, and even more striking, was the immediate enforceability of this sanction, despite the pending appeal.

We argue that the judgment is marked by an unusual degree of judicial creativity, particularly in its underlying conception of democracy, which may be understood through the lens of militant democracy. Although it does not constitute a political judgment in the traditional, partisan sense, its constitutional and symbolic significance is substantial—and the backlash it has provoked against the judiciary is a cause for concern….