Americans have grown accustomed to the idea that courts might shape who can run for president. Now France confronts a similarly charged, potentially transformative moment.
French prosecutors are pursuing a case that could bar Marine Le Pen, one of the country’s most polarizing politicians, from running in the country’s 2027 presidential election. In March 2025, a French court convicted Le Pen of misusing European Parliament funds, imposing a fine, a suspended prison sentence, and a five-year ban from holding public office. She is now appealing the ruling, with a decision expected in 2026 that could determine whether she is eligible to run in the April 2027 presidential election. But the political consequences extend far beyond the courtroom.
Le Pen reached the final round of France’s 2022 presidential election with more than 40 percent of the vote, underscoring how central she has become to the country’s political landscape. If judges ultimately block Le Pen from the ballot, they won’t simply be punishing a politician. They will be reshaping the electoral field before voters ever get the chance to decide.
What Makes This Moment Explosive
Le Pen is not a fringe figure operating on the margins of French politics. Over more than a decade, she has worked to normalize the far right, rebranding her movement, broadening its appeal, and winning millions of votes. Today, her party is one of France’s dominant political forces. Whether one supports her or fiercely opposes her, she is undeniably central to the country’s political life. When a candidate reaches that level of normalization, exclusion feels less like accountability and more like intervention.
Removing such a figure through judicial action, rather than electoral defeat, risks creating the perception that the system itself has stepped in to determine the outcome in advance. To millions of voters, this would not look like justice being enforced; it would look like choice being taken away.
So far, however, the reaction outside Le Pen’s core base has been more mixed than explosive. Although National Rally supporters have rallied behind her, broader public opinion appears less mobilized. A January poll conducted for Le Monde found that while Le Pen’s personal image among her supporters remains strong, perceptions of her political competence and ability to broaden her appeal have declined. Some French commentators now argue that the party itself, rather than Le Pen personally, may be better positioned for 2027, with National Rally president Jordan Bardella increasingly seen as a viable alternative standard-bearer.
When Courts Shape the Political Landscape
France now confronts a challenge that has already destabilized other democracies: how can powerful populist leaders be held accountable without transforming the justice system into a political arena?
In the United States, Donald Trump campaigns for the presidency amid multiple criminal prosecutions. Brazil saw Jair Bolsonaro barred from office after allegations of attempting to undermine democratic institutions. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power, and on trial, while simultaneously pushing to weaken the judiciary. In each instance, legal accountability collided with electoral politics, resulting not in democratic renewal, but in deepened polarization.
These cases expose more than the durability of populism; they reveal the fundamental metamorphosis of courts themselves. Legal institutions originally designed as neutral arbiters have increasingly become central political actors, drawn into electoral conflicts they were never intended to navigate. Court rulings do not resolve political conflicts; they merely reroute them. The consequence is a political landscape where legitimacy is perpetually under contest. Institutional trust erodes because courts are compelled to adjudicate legal cases that, once they affect electoral competition and ballot access, take on unavoidable political consequences .
Populist leaders weaponize institutional confrontation as a core political strategy. When legal systems challenge them, they transcend traditional legal defense, transforming judicial proceedings into a broader narrative of systemic oppression. They portray court actions not as legitimate accountability, but as evidence of an elite conspiracy designed to suppress popular will. Even when criminal charges are substantive and evidence is compelling, legal interventions can paradoxically validate their central political mythology.
Le Pen has meticulously constructed this narrative over the years. Her political movement is fundamentally predicated on the argument that France is controlled by disconnected French judicial and political elites, whom she often rhetorically links to broader European institutions in Brussels that disregard the concerns of ordinary citizens. A judicial ruling preventing her candidacy would not merely be a legal setback; it would perfectly align with and potentially reinforce her longstanding political framework, regardless of the legal proceeding’s actual merit.
Legally, Le Pen’s appeal could still produce several outcomes. The court could overturn the conviction entirely; uphold her guilt while removing the immediate-effect ban; shorten the five-year prohibition enough for her to meet the 2027 registration deadline; leave the ruling intact, making a candidacy unlikely; or uphold and even strengthen the sentence, definitively barring her from the race. Each scenario would reshape not just the presidential field but also the expectations about the role courts now play in democratic competition.
Why Ballot Access Hits Democracies Differently
The profound risk emerges when preventing a candidate from running diverges fundamentally from punishing a politician after an election. Democracies have historically accommodated investigations, legal proceedings, and even convictions following voter choices. In such scenarios, citizens can still perceive the system as respecting their fundamental electoral voice, even if subsequent legal correction occurs.
Exclusion before voting represents a markedly different political dynamic. When judicial authorities determine candidate eligibility, elections risk losing their core function as the primary mechanism of democratic selection. Even supporters who might oppose a particular candidate can feel deeply unsettled watching electoral options be narrowed through judicial intervention rather than political competition.
This explains why ballot access has emerged as one of the most delicate and volatile fault lines in contemporary democratic systems. Such judicial actions transform courts from mere legal enforcers into political gatekeepers, and once that boundary is crossed, democratic legitimacy becomes exponentially more fragile and challenging to maintain.
This dynamic is not confined to Western democracies. In political systems where courts and institutions have long exercised decisive authority over electoral outcomes, judicial intervention has often substituted legal authority for popular choice. What is new, and more unsettling, is seeing similar patterns emerge inside long-established democracies that once treated elections as final.
French Democracy in a Brutal Bind
The dilemma presents a lose-lose scenario for democratic institutions. If judicial authorities retreat, allegations of corruption and public fund misappropriation risk go unaddressed, fundamentally weakening the rule of law. Conversely, if courts exclude Le Pen from the electoral race, millions of voters may perceive their political agency as being summarily dismissed by unelected judicial authorities. Either trajectory poses a significant threat to institutional trust, and once that fundamental democratic confidence erodes, restoration becomes profoundly challenging.
The moment’s volatility is amplified by its broader geopolitical context. Across Europe, far-right and nationalist movements are gaining unprecedented momentum, driven by deep-seated anger over immigration challenges, economic precarity, and a pervasive sentiment that established political institutions have abandoned ordinary citizens. France represents not an isolated case, but a critical frontline in this democratic struggle.
There is no easy solution. Democracies cannot survive if powerful politicians are allowed to break the rules with impunity. But they also struggle to endure when elections appear to be decided in courtrooms rather than at the ballot box.
France may be acting to defend the rule of law. But in doing so, it confronts a dangerous truth: when courts are forced to decide who is allowed to compete for power, the law itself can become fragile, and democracy even more so.