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Personal Remarks on Antonio Cassese and His Vision of International Law and International Criminal Justice along the Road He Walked

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2012

Abstract

This article is a journey through the life of Antonio Cassese, a giant of international law, no doubt one of the most prominent international lawyers of the twentieth century, and the ‘architect of international criminal justice’. From his first steps in the academic community in Pisa in the early 1960s to his well-known contributions as first president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, he became a prolific author and editor of seminal books and commentaries on international law and international criminal law, as well as founder of groundbreaking law journals.

Type
HAGUE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS: International Criminal Court and Tribunals
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2012

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References

1 See SG/SM/13895, 24 October 2011 (reproducing a statement issued on 22 October 2011), available at www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sgsm13895.doc.htm.

3 See, e.g., the statement of Italy's minister of foreign affairs, available at www.esteri.it/MAE/IT/Sala_Stampa/ArchivioNotizie/Comunicati/2011/10/20111024_Cassese.htm.

4 As is well known, in The Hague, Nino spent several years, first at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and, more recently, heading the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

5 The event and the speeches that were delivered are available at www.stl-tsl.org/en/about-the-stl/events/walking-the-road-he-paved-tribute-to-antonio-cassese and several documents can be found from that page; see also the website of the Geneva Academy of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (headed by Nino's two best pupils, Andrew Clapham and Paola Gaeta), which devoted a section to the memory of Nino, available at www.adh-geneva.ch/about-us/tribute-to-antonio-cassese.

6 See, in this regard, the heartfelt obituary posted on the website of the Geneva Academy.

7 In Pisa, under the guidance of Giuseppe Sperduti (a mentor he subsequently shared with other well-known Italian international lawyers, Natalino Ronzitti and Roberto Barsotti, two of his younger colleagues in Pisa), he worked on his first books, Il diritto interno nel processo internazionale (1962) (in English, Municipal Law in International Proceedings) and Il controllo internazionale: contributo alla teoria delle funzioni di organizzazione dell'ordinamento internazionale (1971) (in English, International Monitoring: Contribution to the Theory of the Functions of Organizations in the International Legal Order), and on several articles mainly published in Italian law journals.

8 See the books he edited: Control of Foreign Policy in Western Democracies, 2 vols. (1982); The New Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict (1979–80); UN Law Fundamental Rights: Two Topics in International Law (1979); United Nations Peace-Keeping: Legal Essays (1978).

9 The latter, originally published in Italian (1986), was subsequently translated into English and French.

10 A. Branca (ed.), Commentario alla Costituzione, in various volumes. Antonio Cassese contributed to three of them respectively with commentaries on Arts. 10–11, 80, and 87 of the Italian Constitution (1975–79).

11 In Recueil des cours, Vol. 192, 1985 III, 331–476.

12 A. Cassese and B. V. A. Röling, The Tokyo Trial and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger (1994).

13 See, e.g., the project European Union, the Human Rights Challenge; A. Clapham, Human Rights and the European Community: A Critical Overview; and Cassese, A., Clapham, A., and Weiler, J. (eds.), Human Rights and the European Community: Methods of Protection (1991)Google Scholar; and Human Rights and the European Community: The Substantive Law (1991); see also Weiler, J., Cassese, A., and Spinedi, M. (eds.), International Crimes of State: A Critical Analysis of the ILC's Draft Article 19 on State Responsibility (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Originally published in Italian (1994) and translated into English with the title Inhuman States: Imprisonment, Detention and Torture in Europe Today (1996).

15 A. Cassese, International Law (2001).

16 He was appointed at the ‘Pascal’ Chair and, in this capacity, together with Mireille Delmas-Marty, he co-ordinated an important research project on international crimes between domestic and international courts; see Cassese, A. and Delmas-Marty, M. (eds.), Juridictions nationales et crimes internationaux (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Crimes internationaux et juridictions internationales (2002).

17 Clapham, A., ‘Concluding Remarks: Three Tribes Engage on the Future of International Criminal Law’, (2011) 9 JICJ 689Google Scholar.

18 A. Cassese, The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: A Commentary (2002), in two volumes.

19 ‘Editorial’, (2009) 7 JICJ 1.

20 Published by Oxford University Press in 2009.

22 See, in this regard, the collection of some of his articles in Il sogno dei diritti umani (2008), as well as the anthology of selected excerpts of other eminent personalities in the area of human rights that he edited, Voci contro la barbarie: La battaglia per i diritti umani attraverso la voce dei suoi protagonisti (2008).

24 Gaeta, P. and Zappalà, S. (eds.), Presentation to ‘The Human Dimension of International Law. Antonio Cassese Selected Papers’ (2008)Google Scholar.

25 The story of the sparrow recounted in the piece by one of his best friends is exemplary in this regard; see L. Condorelli, ‘Nino Cassese and the Sparrow's Feet’, in ibid., at xlix–lii.

26 A. Cassese, Realizing Utopia: The Future of International Law (forthcoming).