Can justice be truly blind? Truly impartial and impervious to biases, pressures and power plays? Can citizens in this day and age agree to accept it when a court bars a presidential frontrunner from contesting the next election? The party of the French far right's Marine Le Pen calls it "an execution of democracy," after a ruling found nine far-right lawmakers guilty of running a "system" that funnelled €2.9 million from the European Parliament to National Rally insiders.

Injustice is in the eye of the beholder: take Romania and Turkey, where frontrunners have also been recently barred under very different circumstances. Whenever a politician is convicted, it's a stress test for institutions and the rule of law. In the case of Le Pen, she's got the backing of a growing media echo chamber. How far will crying foul carry the far right in France?

Donald Trump never went to trial for allegedly trying to forcibly overturn his 2020 election defeat. With the US president now testing constitutional limits in his country, will the illiberal winds across the Atlantic further stoke sympathy for Le Pen, or spook citizens who may look at the turmoil in Washington and prefer France's imperfect republic as it is?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Read moreLe Pen's French presidential hopes in jeopardy as election ban upends 2027 race