Cause célèbre

Rare card · No. 58488

A cause célèbre (unadapted borrowing from French; lit. transl. famous cause; KAWZ sə-LEB(-rə), French: [koz selɛbʁ]; pl. causes célèbres, pronounced like the singular) is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning, and heated public debate. The term is sometimes used positively for celebrated legal cases for their precedent value (each locus classicus or "case-in-point") and more often negatively for infamous ones, whether for scale, outrage, scandal, or conspiracy theories. The phrase "cause célèbre" is no longer used as such in modern French; instead it has been fully adopted into English and is unitalicized in most English dictionaries. It has been noted that the public attention given to a particular case or event can obscure the facts rather than clarify them. As John Humffreys Parry states, "The true story of many a cause célèbre is never made manifest in the evidence given or in the advocates' orations, but might be recovered from these old papers...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Caran d'Ache, Public domain