By posing in a Dior dress and high-heeled boots, President Sarkozy’s glamorous Justice Minister has fuelled a revolt by judges and lawyers who are accusing her of destroying the fabric of the French justice system.

As Rachida Dati, 42, defended herself yesterday over supposedly frivolous pictures for Paris Match magazine, 37 lawyers chained themselves to a courthouse in the southern town of Bourgoin in protest against her decision to close 300 tribunals across France.

Ms Dati, who is Mr Sarkozy’s closest protégée and Cabinet icon of racial diversity, has drawn the wrath of the legal profession since she began to prune the sprawling court system this autumn. Judges’ unions, court staff and lawyers are staging marches, hunger strikes and working to rule in order to reverse her reforms.

For many judges and lawyers, Ms Dati’s decision to flaunt her looks in Paris Match was a provocation by a woman who has shown contempt towards the hardship that she is imposing. Bruno Thouzellier, president of the Syndical Union of Judges (USM), lamented “the contrast between her show of riches, dresses by grand couturiers and grand hotels and the difficult reality that justice personnel are living through”.

The trade unions are also unhappy that Ms Dati spends time accompanying Mr Sarkozy on most of his foreign trips.

The minister came under fire yesterday from Élisabeth Guigou, a former Socialist Justice Minister, for cultivating a sexy image that conflicted with her solemn function.

“This ministry occupies a special role in the State, dealing with serious subjects such as prisons,” Ms Guigou told Ms Dati in an interview for VSD magazine in the minister’s office. “You have to be careful about glamour images . . . Since your nomination, people are a little too interested in the anecdotal side of your personality.”

Ironically, Ms Guigou, a former protégée of the late President Mitterrand, suffered in the 1990s from the same nickname that is now Ms Dati’s — the Barbie Doll minister.

Ms Dati, a one-time magistrate with no political experience, is unrepentant over her glossy image despite a drop of a dozen points in her approval rating over the past month as she has faced the judicial rebellion.

Questioned about her love for Prada, Chanel and Dior, she said: “Ever since I was little I had a taste for being well dressed. It’s a question of showing respect towards others,” she told Paris Match.

As the child of poor immigrants from Algeria and Morocco, Ms Dati argues that she has earned the right to enjoy fine clothes. Her view springs straight from Mr Sarkozy’s doctrine that there is nothing wrong with flaunting the fruits of hard-earned success.

In her interview, Ms Dati also said that she loved parties and was not neglecting her romantic life. The minister is said by French media to be in a close relationship with one of Mr Sarkozy’s industrialist friends.

The President has been defending her fiercely, admiring the way that she stands out from the traditional justice world, “those grey-haired men all ranked together like peas in a pod”, as he put it on television last month.

Me, a model?

— Rachida Dati was born in 1965, one of 12 children. Her father was a Moroccan mason and her mother was from Algeria

— From the age of 16 she began working in a clinic, studying at night to gain degrees in economics and law. She is the highest-ranking person of North African descent in France

— She rejects the notion, however, that she should be a role model, saying: “My life is not a beautiful story. I am not the heroine of an instructive novel to present to the people so they can shed a tear or to encourage them to work hard”

— Nicolas Sarkozy has referred to her as “ma beurette”, meaning “my little Arab girl”

Source: Times Archives

Times Recommends

• Obama's African grandmother supports
• Oliver Stone's W
• Why school's out for good in Zimbabwe