Between Act and Body: Literature as a Counter-Space to Justice in the Work of Laure Heinich

Two perspectives: Judges' mannerisms and the physicality of violence

Laure Heinich is a French criminal defense lawyer and writer who has practiced law in Parisian courts for approximately twenty years and has earned a reputation as a precise observer of legal practice, particularly in the area of ​​serious criminal law – including sexual offenses, homicide, and detention cases. Her title Porter leur voix (2014), an autobiographical non-fiction book about the defense and the functional logics of the criminal justice system, she published her first novel in 2021. Defensive body, in which she reflects on her professional experiences in a literary way and at the same time opens up the human and institutional tensions of the criminal process to a wider public. With Justice against Men (2023) she sharpened her critical profile as an essayist before she began her career in 2026 with Avant la peine presented a second novel that once again explores the fault lines between law, the search for truth, and individual experience.

Heinich's non-fiction books explain the workings of the justice system analytically and argumentatively. His novels, on the other hand, reveal something that no non-fiction book can fully capture: inner perception, emotions, the unspeakable that arises between rules and reality. The young judge physically feels the strain of her office—the unease, the uncertainty, the breathing in the courtroom. Such subjective vibrations cannot be analyzed, but they can be narrated. The novel form allows for emotional nuances—exhaustion, disgust, compassion—that cannot be generalized and therefore would have no place in non-fiction. The reader becomes a witness, a sympathizer, a partner in reflection. This creates a moral experience that is both cognitive and affective. Defensive body For example, the reader is drawn into the process of emotional distress that the father experiences when he hears the photos and factual evidence – an experience that transcends the boundaries of mere information.

Avant la peine (2026)

Avant la peine This leads to a deconstruction of the concept of "truth" in law. The following excerpt marks the narrative turning point in the novel: the recognition that the legal system cannot achieve absolute truth, but only a "judicial truth," a faint reflection of reality, which ultimately makes justice a tragic, fallible instrument.

In the novel Avant la peine The central offense is the accusation of rape (rapeThe incident, which takes place in a hospital on-call room between the friends Rebecca and Baptiste, involves an encounter between two doctors. Rebecca files charges against Baptiste, stating that he pushed her against the wall, kissed her against her will, and ultimately penetrated her with his fingers while she repeatedly said "no." Baptiste, however, denies the act and claims it was a consensual sexual relationship; he admits to kissing and touching but denies any form of penetration. According to the French law cited in the book, penetration—whether digital, oral, or penile—is the decisive criterion for classifying an act as the crime of rape, which, if convicted, can carry a prison sentence of up to fifteen years.

The novel focuses on the premise of "he said, she said" ("parole contre parole"), exploring the impossibility of finding objective truth without material evidence. The narrative places the reader in the role of a juror, confronted with their doubts and "inner convictions" as they follow the contrasting accounts of the protagonists. The justice system is portrayed as one obligated to establish a truth despite the lack of evidence, with the credibility of those involved being reconstructed through psychological evaluations and witness testimony regarding their moral character. Heinich demonstrates how this stalemate divides the entire social environment – ​​from families to hospital staff.

Avant la peine The novel unfolds the story of a young judge who must reorient herself within the court system, her daily life becoming a constant balancing act between personal overwhelm and her institutional role. The very first sentence – "before the court, there is always this feeling of imbalance" ("avant le tribunal, il ya toujours ce sentiment de déséquilibre") – underscores this fundamental sense of transition. The novel depicts the judge on her long walks through the Palace of Justice, in court sessions, and in moments of reflection before the files. A crucial scene involves her perception of the "mise en scène judiciaire" – the court as a stage that orders the characters' perceptions and structures her own judicial work.

In parallel, the text observes how the narrator wavers between observation and decision-making. Cases appear as ever-new challenges to her judgment, yet simultaneously as abstract "dossiers" that create distance. In one session, she experiences how the roles—defendant, victim, lawyers—are almost imposed upon the individuals through recurring rituals. The tension between person and case becomes the central problem. This tension also shapes her self-perception: she increasingly sees herself as part of a system that she initially tried to understand.

The novel develops the thesis that the role of judge arises not through knowledge, but rather through experience – through repetition, observation, and institutional framing. Avant la peine It is therefore a legal novel that primarily describes the genesis of a judge's demeanor, not a spectacular case. Its main thesis is: The law shapes the subject at least as much as the subject shapes the law.

Baptiste stands before the investigating judge who will decide on his freedom:

Justice is portrayed here as a bet, a game of chance ("pile ou face"). The power of law in this novel is not based on logical derivation, but rather on fate and the subjective arbitrariness of the judge.

Avant la peine This novel explores the transition into the legal system and the loss of self-evidence in dealing with moral decisions. The narrator, new to the court, initially experiences justice as a discontinuous sequence of scenes that demand a new relationship with people. Particularly striking is the scene of her first encounters in the courtroom, where she recognizes the ritualized spatial arrangement as "mise en scène judiciaire." This realization marks the moment she understands that law operates not only through norms but also through space, rhythm, and role. As the novel continues to show how her perception of the accused changes—from viewing an individual fate to considering a "case"—the development of her judicial habitus becomes a form of distancing. The administration of justice shapes her: the repeated reading of files, the routines of the trial, and the constant adaptation to the institutional framework mold her more profoundly than she initially realizes.

At the same time, the novel remains sensitive to the limitations of this demeanor. In moments of emotional upheaval—for example, when a defendant suddenly bursts into tears or when a victim sketches a complex biography in just a few sentences—the judge experiences the constant interplay between distance and empathy. She begins to doubt whether the criteria of the law are truly sufficient to produce justice. Thus, the novel portrays the judge as a subject in transition: she is "avant" of a fixed, sovereign role. The fact that the novel does not center on a grand verdict or a final case is not a omission, but rather a deliberate choice: the "avant" is the state in which judicial identity is first formed. Thus, the story unfolds. Avant la peine as much as the emergence of legal judgment as its fragility.

Defensive body (2021)

Heinich's first novel Defensive body In contrast, the novel doesn't begin with the judge's perspective; it tells the story from the point of view of a lawyer confronted with the full harshness of reality in a particularly horrific case—the rape and murder of young Ève. Right at the beginning, the protagonist receives a call from the father: "He says my daughter is dead. He says murderer." The novel thus begins not in the institutional routine, but in the moment of shock that makes the administration of justice necessary in the first place. The court appears here as a space for reacting to existential trauma.

The experienced lawyer Jamin advises the murderer Jean on a procedural appeal, a reflection on the value of the rule of law regardless of guilt.

Law is presented here like an abstract religion ("irrefutable laws"). The lawyer takes refuge in the technicalities of the law to avoid bearing the moral burden of the crime. It is a strategy of "formalism as a shield."

In the scenes – such as the detailed autopsy examination that the lawyer goes through with the father – it becomes clear that Defensive body the materiality of law is emphasized more strongly: bodies, traces, injuries. The text thus develops a different fundamental thesis than Avant la peineWhile one novel depicts the development of judicial judgment, the other makes Defensive body It becomes visible how injury, violence and physicality make justice necessary in the first place, and at the same time always precarious. Defensive body is a novel about the boundaries where law and the body meet.

In Defensive body It becomes clear that the law is less a neutral arbiter and more a field of power imbalances: the victim's family is emotionally dependent on the lawyer's interpretations, the accused is completely at her mercy, and the investigative apparatus determines which traces exist and how bodies are interpreted. This is exemplified by the prison scene, in which the prisoners' relatives are treated like "victims of a family punishment"—searched, stripped, humiliated—while the lawyer herself has to show her card five times to get to the conference room. The understanding of law here is that justice affects all bodies, not just those of the accused—and often reproduces the very forms of violence it purports to regulate. The meticulous depiction of the murder reconstruction—"re-examining the sexual acts and the blows" under the observation of police officers, the judge, and photographers—also reveals the law as a technique that not only describes violence but reconstructs it in order to judge it.

The lawyer reads the investigation file in the Palace of Justice. Reading the file is described as "breathing underwater." The legal narrative is backward-looking ("remonter le fil") and dissects a life into bureaucratic fragments. The justice system continues to "work" on the body of the dead woman, stripping her of all dignity.

The protagonist, Baptiste, works in a hospital, making the comparison between the medical emergency and the justice system central. Heinich develops a logic of overload. The justice system, just like the hospital, is described as a sterile, mechanical machine that leaves no room for individuality or "poetry." It's purely about functioning and managing suffering bodies.

Law as an imperfect institution: The unspeakable and the limits of punishment

Law is a realm of human ambivalence, not its resolution. Both novels demonstrate that law is not "objective"; it proves to be a permanent moral struggle. The judicial narrator in Avant la peine She feels this in moments when she is too emotionally involved in the case, or when a defendant destabilizes her entire whiteboard strategy with a simple "no." The lawyer in Defensive body She experiences the same moral conflicts when she simultaneously represents the interests of the parents, wants to understand the brutality of the act, and yet must acknowledge that the accused also has a right to defense and dignity.

In Laure Heinich's novels, justice is not portrayed as moral salvation, but rather as an imperfect, often dehumanized machine that fails to meet the demands of bureaucratic form and human truth. Defensive body The process is exposed as a strategic match without a real victory, in which even a life sentence ("perpétuité") cannot fill the existential void for the bereaved, since the legal "forever" never compensates for the loss of "never again." In parallel, the process is problematized. Avant la peine The “vérité judiciaire” (legal truth) is seen as a fundamentally flawed construct, whose mechanical execution resembles an overburdened hospital system and often generates more additional violence through protracted procedures than it enables healing. Ultimately, the reflection in both works culminates in the sobering realization that there are no “just punishments,” but only state-organized sanctions that leave the individual trauma of the victims and the complexity of the perpetrators' personalities untouched.

The novel title Avant la peine It refers to a liminal state: the before of judgment, the before of professionalization, the before of punishment. The "avant" is both temporal—the phase before the verdict—and existential: the judge herself is "avant" of her judicial identity. The title stages the entire narrative as a process of preparation, of learning, of inner deliberation. The title Defensive body The title plays with a double meaning: it refers to "defended bodies"—the bodies of victims, but also the bodies of the accused—and to "forbidden, taboo bodies." It encapsulates the fact that in criminal proceedings, the body is never merely a piece of evidence; it is a bearer of social significance. It is defended, exhibited, reconstructed, and shamed. Here, justice is not an intellectual process, but rather a physical reality.

Both novels share an interest in the realities of the justice system and institutional practice, but differ significantly in their poetics. Avant la peine She works introspectively, almost essayistically, with strongly rhythmic reflections and a recurring perception of the spatial and social choreography in the courtroom. Scenes are often miniature observations: the walk up the stairs, the view across the courtroom, the gesture of a defendant. Defensive body In contrast, it is more scenic, more physically concrete, almost documentary. Scenes like the reenactment of the murder, in which the accused has to recreate every move with a female gendarme – “refaire les actes sexuels et les coups” before the judge, accompanied by photographs of the Judicial Identity – make the linguistic and physical violence of the trial immediately tangible. These two poetic approaches complement each other by showing the system from two perspectives: Avant la peine from within – the thinking of the judge's role –, Defensive body From the outside – the body, the real violence of the act, the trauma of the victims and their families. Together they form a panorama of justice as a field of tension between abstraction and materiality.

Während Avant la peine It is structured episodically, arranged like workdays or learning steps, and carries Defensive body a more linear case progression: phone call – investigation – expert opinion – trial – verdict. One novel depicts the structure of the justice system, the other its drama. In both novels, language as a tool of power is central. Courtroom language – the judge's questions, the transcript, the formal pronouncements – shapes the discourse. At the same time, silence, hesitant answers, and physical reactions play a significant role. Defensive body For example, the reaction of the accused Jean during the reenactment – ​​his silence, his retracted “non” – becomes an interpretive moment, because no one can prove that it was otherwise.

Laure Heinich's two novels present a profoundly humanistic yet ambivalent understanding of law: law does not appear as a closed system of norms, but rather as a space of experience where power, morality, and vulnerability collide. By describing the justice system not from the outside, but from the perspective of her protagonists' perceptions, doubts, and affective reactions, Heinich reveals a law that is always also rooted in the body, emotions, and biography. The literary form makes visible that justice is, above all, experience.

What is special about her writing style is her consistent focus on the unspoken: those layers of experience that cannot appear in legal texts. In Avant la peine This unspoken truth takes the form of inner turmoil – the young judge's "déséquilibre," her doubts, her silence, the unrecorded movements of her thoughts. In Defensive body In contrast, the unspoken becomes the silence of bodies: the silent "no" of the accused, the traces left by the victim that speak louder than any statement. Silence and language, gesture and gaze, form their own jurisdiction beneath the official one.

Heinich also makes it clear that what remains unsaid is structurally determined: not every character is allowed to speak, and not every utterance carries weight. In the parloir, in the courtroom, in the reconstruction of the crime, speaking positions are distributed and denied – the relatives, the prisoners, even the accused are subject to an institutional silence that the justice system itself helps to produce. Even the judge in Avant la peine She learns how her role shapes, restricts, or silences her speech. This fosters a literary awareness that access to language means power.

In this way, the novels achieve something that Heinich's legal non-fiction books cannot: they create a space in which the invisible, fragile, and unnameable aspects of the justice system can be narrated. Through internal perspectives, physical signs, and the depiction of institutional language barriers, Heinich reveals a complex, multifaceted experience of the justice system that does not seek normative answers, but rather aims to make visible what the law normally obscures. Her literature thus becomes the antithesis of the justice system—a place where silence is not a deficiency, but rather an insight.

Defensive body It ends abruptly: “À perpétuité” – a punishment that sweeps through the courtroom not as a triumph, but as a shock. It brings neither relief to the parents of the murdered Ève nor any comprehensible logic to the accused Jean; all the characters remain in a “croisée des chagrins,” a crossroads of anguish, where no one emerges victorious. The scene makes the physicality of the law visible: Jean “encaisse” the punishment like a blow, while the lawyer recalls having “defended” the mother’s body with her own. The seemingly abrupt transition from the courtroom to the bustling city marks an anti-Arterian conclusion: the law may impose punishments, but it creates no healing, no meaning, no closure – the novel insists on this void and, precisely through this, becomes the antithesis of justice.

Avant la peine However, the ending opens into a space of questioning: Instead of a judgment, Rebecca is asked to name what punishment would "repair"—an experimental moment that shifts responsibility to the subject and simultaneously reveals the impossibility of a "just" punishment. The final sentence—"There are no just punishments. Just punishments."—formulates an ethics of the undecidable: Punishment can only be imperfect. Unlike in Defensive body This refusal does not create darkness, but rather an open space for thought, placing the reader in the position of a juror who must seek her "intimate conviction." Where the first novel depicts the brutality of a definitive but inconsolable end, the second precisely denies an ending and relies on ongoing reflection—two complementary perspectives on the limits of justice.

Heinich doesn't depict utopias, but rather heterotopias of law: spaces in which violence, power, and justice are reordered. If a utopia exists, it is only as a faint yearning for recognition of the vulnerable—a moral flicker that the novels deliberately leave unresolved.