Raymond Marcellin

Raymond Marcellin (; 19 August 1914 – 8 September 2004) was a French politician.

Biography Early life Marcellin was born Sézanne, in the Marne department. The son of a banker, he studied law at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Paris, earning a doctorate; he would become a lawyer at the Court of Appeal of Paris in 1945. Marcellin was mobilized at the outbreak of World War II and captured by the Wehrmacht, but managed to escape to the zone libre. He then settled in Vichy France to resume his legal studies.

In 1941 Marcellin joined the Institut des études corporatives et sociales (IECS), a corporatist organization headed by his friend Maurice Bouvier-Ajam and supported by the Vichy regime.

During the Fourth Republic, Marcellin successively served as a junior minister in the governments of Henri Queuille, Georges Bidault, Edgar Faure, and Antoine Pinay. A staunch anti-communist, his decision to dismiss seven employees of the National Center for Cinematography in 1950 over their membership in the French Communist Party (PCF) or the PCF-aligned trade union CGT caused widespread protests and led to a parliamentary inquiry.

In 1971 Marcellin tried to amend the 1901 law guaranteeing freedom of association, by requiring preliminary administrative authorization in order to create an association; the amendment was ultimately rejected by the Constitutional Council. He also served as president of the Regional Council of Brittany from 1978 to 1986. In the 1981 elections Marcellin was again elected to the National Assembly for the Union for French Democracy (UDF), and remained a deputy until his retirement at the age of 82 in 1997. He died in Paris in 2004.