French lawyer, born at Reims on the 18th of April 1860. He was educated at Reims and Paris, and spent several years in England and Germany. He was called to the bar in 1884, and rapidly made a reputation as a brilliant lawyer and advocate, being counsel for the defence in most of the important political trials of the day during a period of nearly thirty years. It was his conduct of the Dreyfus case, however, which placed him at the top of his profession and earned him his unique reputation. He fought with unremitting energy for his client during both the first and second revisions of the trial, in 1898 and 1899, a task attended with considerable danger, as political passions were so strongly excited at the time that Labori was shot at and wounded at Rennes on the eve of his cross-examination of the witnesses for the prosecution. Dreyfus was not finally declared innocent until 1906, and Labori never once relaxed his efforts on behalf of the unfortunate officer. Other notable trials in which he was concerned were the prosecution of Émile Zola for libel (1898), which arose out of the Dreyfus case; the Humbert affair (1902); and the trial of Madame Caillaux for the murder of M. Calmette, editor of the Figaro (1914), when he secured her acquittal. He died in Paris on the 14th of March 1917.
