All publications by André Soulier

Sport… a universal communion, beyond political regimes, religions…

The transferal of players from one continent to another, first from North Africa then from sub-Saharan Africa, the call, thanks to Spain and Portugal, of South America, while players from the Far East, China, Japan, or South Korea now join European soccer clubs, enriching English, French, German or Italian clubs with their talent.

And then, sometimes sparked off by national political clashes, and also now by confrontations between States and Nations, these translate in violent demonstrations, seemingly unrelated to each other.

Emmanuel Pierrat, member of the Paris Bar, prolific author, has published in fall 2022 an erudite book showing through the centuries the role, sometimes revolutionary sometimes reformist, of very talented lawyers, often embracing at the end a political career at the highest level.

In 336 pages published by Albin Michel, Emmanuel Pierrat showcases the most famous lawyers, their fevers, their harangues, and the societal and cultural changes that their voice has prompted in our “modern” societies.

This is the case of our founding partner, André Soulier, Dean of the Lyon Bar, to whom Emmanuel Pierrat devotes six pages (pages 269-275) of his book, under the significant title “When the lawyer precedes the law” which praises a legislative reform that followed one of the acquittals he has obtained in his career.

In today’s time when some politicians are tempted to “use the coffin of a 12-year-old girl as a stepping stone” to promote their ideas and a deadly hatred, when others buy the domain name corresponding to the first name of the little victim of a heinous murder, when investigations for breach of the secrecy of pre-trial investigations are launched following the interview of a police officer giving details on this horrible news item, it appears essential to recall the importance – beyond the respect normally due to the victim – of a core value of our rule of law: The secrecy of pre-trial investigations and inquiries.

Christophe Hondelatte, a French TV and radio journalist, interviewed André Soulier in a podcast entitled Jean-Marie Deveaux, a convenient scapegoat as part as his “Hondelatte tells” podcast series broadcasted on Europe 1, a leading French private radio station.

The so-called Jean-Marie Deveaux case, often described as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in French criminal history, had a considerable impact because it is directly at the origin of the 1970 French Indemnification Act which provides for the indemnification of people sentenced wrongly before being cleared of all charges pursuant to a dismissal, discharge or acquittal ruling.

No one can be expected to do the impossible. By judgment dated September 7, 2015, provisionally enforceable, the Commercial Court of Lyon ordered one of our clients – an asset manager – to produce a number of accounting and financial documents to one of its former clients, subject to a daily penalty of 5,000 euros. […]

A recent case – there is no need to mention the name of the person involved since the media have extensively echoed the accusations made by boy scout victims of sexual abuses by a priest in the 1980’s and at the beginning of 1991 following the recent indictment of such priest on charges of sexual […]