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Holding Leaders Accountable: France, Brazil, and the United States in the Mirror of Democracy

Paris: On September 25, 2025, the Paris Criminal Tribunal pronounced a judgment that sent shockwaves through the French Republic: former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in prison, with a deferred committal order, despite his right to appeal. For the first time in modern French history, a former head of state is facing incarceration in an ordinary prison, without the possibility of a suspended sentence or electronic monitoring.

For lawyers, observers, and citizens alike, the message was unambiguous: the justice system, though imperfect, retains the power to hold even the most powerful accountable. The tribunal’s decision to order provisional enforcement of the sentence, even with deferred imprisonment, is a rare and striking move in a country where appeals are typically suspensive.

The debate over provisional enforcement has been intense in France. When Marine Le Pen, leader of the main far-right political party “le Rassemblement National” (Nationally Rally in English) was sentenced earlier this year in a case concerning the misuse of European Parliament funds, her supporters denounced the order for provisional enforcement as an attempt to silence a candidate. But legal analysts and those close to the case largely agreed that the evidence was overwhelming and that the decision was likely to be upheld on appeal. Sarkozy’s case now places the same exceptional measure in the spotlight once again, under circumstances where the stakes are uniquely symbolic: the imprisonment of a former president.

This French moment is not isolated. Just two weeks ago, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court condemned Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison for his role in fomenting the January 2023 insurrection. Across the Atlantic, in the United States, former president Donald Trump has faced multiple indictments, including charges related to the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, and even a criminal conviction, yet remained free and ultimately secured a second term in the White House.

Taken together, these cases raise a question that is both urgent and timeless: what does it mean for a democracy to exercise power over itself? As Alexis de Tocqueville observed nearly two centuries ago, a healthy democracy is maîtresse d’elle-même, master of itself, capable of longterm designs, and willing to act when the right occasion arises. In France and Brazil, the occasion has come, and the courts have seized it.

France’s Constitutional Rubicon

The Sarkozy verdict is significant not only for its legal outcome but for its symbolism. For decades, the French presidency has been likened to a republican monarchy, insulated by layers of immunity and political deference. By ordering the provisional enforcement of the sentence and refusing any possibility of sentence adjustment, the tribunal signaled that no individual, not even a former head of state, stands above the law.

This is democracy as Tocqueville imagined it: capable of turning its gaze inward, judging its own leaders as it would ordinary citizens. And this verdict now compels the French penal system to apply the same rules to a former president as to any other citizen, not as a theoretical test, but as a concrete obligation that will soon be carried out.

Brazil’s Reckoning with Populism

If France’s trial was slow and methodical, Brazil’s was dramatic and historic. Bolsonaro’s conviction for attempting to subvert the democratic order represents the first time a former Brazilian president has been sentenced to such a severe term. His supporters cry persecution; his opponents hail the ruling as proof that Brazilian democracy has matured after years of institutional stress.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Brazil’s courts must enforce the rule of law without turning Bolsonaro into a martyr capable of fueling further polarization. The country’s ability to carry out the sentence fairly and peacefully will be a test of whether Latin America’s largest democracy can break the cycle of impunity that has long plagued its politics.

The United States and the Test of Democracy

Across the Atlantic, the contrast is striking. Donald Trump faced a cascade of legal challenges from the Georgia election interference case to federal prosecutions for obstruction and the New York “hush money” case, which resulted in his 2024 conviction for falsifying business records. Among the most consequential are the federal charges stemming from his alleged role in inciting the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, an unprecedented attack on the peaceful transfer of power.

Yet none of these proceedings prevented him from running for president again and winning a second term. For many, this demonstrates the resilience of American institutions, which refuse to bar a candidate from office while legal appeals remain unresolved. For others, it exposes a vulnerability: the inability of the justice system to prevent a leader under serious criminal indictment from reclaiming power.

This paradox raises a deeper question: at what point does the defense of democracy require limiting the access to power of a candidate who is under indictment or convicted? The United States has chosen caution, leaving the decision to the electorate rather than to the courts.

Justice as a Measure of Democracy

These three cases, Sarkozy in Paris, Bolsonaro in Brasília, Trump in multiple U.S. courtrooms present a paradox. They show that democracies can fail: their highest leaders can be accused of grave crimes. But they also show that democracies can act: they can prosecute those crimes in public, with due process, before independent courts.

This is what Tocqueville meant by a democracy “master of itself.” It is not merely the right to vote every four or five years; it is the willingness to hold even the most powerful to account, to accept the risk that doing so may tear at the social fabric and to trust that such a tear can ultimately be repaired.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed in Self-Reliance, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” For democracies, the same is true: their legitimacy depends on preserving their own integrity even when that means judging the men who once embodied them.

As the world watches, these trials may mark the beginning of a new era of democratic selfscrutiny or reveal the limits of the will to hold power accountable. Either way, they remind us that the true measure of a democracy is not the absence of wrongdoing by its leaders, but the courage and capacity to confront it.