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René Cassin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of theConstitutional Council | |
| In office 11 July 1960 – 2 March 1971 | |
| Appointed by | Gaston Monnerville |
| President | Léon Noël Gaston Palewski |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | François Luchaire |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1887-04-05)5 April 1887 |
| Died | 6 February 1976(1976-02-06) (aged 88) Paris, France |
René Samuel Cassin (5 October 1887 – 20 February 1976) was a Frenchjurist known for co-authoring theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights and receiving theNobel Peace Prize.
Born inBayonne, Cassin served as a soldier in theFirst World War during which he was seriously wounded. He was of Portuguese-Jewish descent.[1]
On 24 June 1940, during theSecond World War, Cassin heeded GeneralCharles de Gaulle'sradio appeal and joined him inLondon. Cassin used his legal expertise to help de Gaulle'sFree French.
Between 1944 and 1959, Cassin was a member of theCouncil of State.
Seconded to theUN Commission on Human Rights after the war, he was a major contributor to the 1948Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For that work, he received theNobel Peace Prize in1968. The same year, he was awarded one of theUN General Assembly'sHuman Rights Prizes.
Cassin was born inBayonne on 5 October 1887, to aSephardiJewish family.[2] He grew up inNice, where he attended theLycée Masséna [fr], and graduated with a bachelor's degree at 17. At theUniversity of Provence[citation needed] he studied political economics, constitutional history, and Roman law and was awarded distinctions in law, a university degree with distinction and the first prize in the competitive examinations in the faculty of law. He was an invited speaker at international peace conferences. In 1914 in Paris, he was awarded his doctorate in juridical science, economics and politics.[3]
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Cassin served in theFirst World War in 1916 at theBattle of the Meuse. In one operation, he led the attack on enemy positions and was gravely injured in the arm, side and stomach by machine gunfire. A medic saved his life, but he received surgical treatment only ten days later atAntibes. He was awarded theCroix de Guerre for his actions but was too seriously injured to return to active duty,[3] and he was mustered out as a war invalid.[4]
He helped to found the Union fédérale, a leftist pacifist organization for veterans.
Cassin also headed manynon-governmental organizations (NGO) and founded the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans in 1918 and served until 1940 as its president and then as its honorary president.
In 1920, Cassin was appointed professor of law at Lille and in 1929 at Paris, where he continued to teach until 1960. In addition, he taught at the Academy of International Law of The Hague, and at theGeneva Graduate Institute, among other places.[5]
As a French delegate to theLeague of Nations from 1924 to 1938, Cassin pressed for progress on disarmament and for developing institutions to aid the resolution of international conflicts.[citation needed]
Refusing the armistice, Cassin embarked on a British ship, theSS Ettrick, inSaint-Jean-de-Luz on 24 June 1940, and joined GeneralCharles de Gaulle inLondon to help him continue the war against Germany. Cassin was, therefore, one of the first to join de Gaulle.[6][page needed]De Gaulle needed legal help to draft the statutes of Free France and so Cassin's arrival in London was very welcome.[7]
René Cassin did not speak English but already knew leading academics and political figures like British Foreign MinisterAnthony Eden.[8]
In April 1941, Cassin made a radio broadcast from London by addressing himself especially toFrench Jews from a secular viewpoint and reminding them of the full and equal protection that France had always offered to Jews since theFrench Revolution. He exhorted them to help pay back that debt by joining the forces ofFree France. In May,Vichy France stripped Cassin of his French citizenship and in 1942 sentenced him to death in absentia.[9]
After the war, Cassin was assigned to theUnited Nations to help draft theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights. Working from a list of rights elaborated by the Canadian scholar and professor of lawJohn Humphrey, Cassin produced a revised draft and expanded the text.[10]
He served on the UNHuman Rights Commission and theHague Court of Arbitration.
He was also a member (1959–1965) and president (1965–1968) of theEuropean Court of Human Rights. The court building is now onAllée René Cassin, inStrasbourg.[citation needed]
In 1945, General de Gaulle suggested that Cassin, having done so much for the French people, also do something to help the Jewish people. Cassin became the president of the French-JewishAlliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) which had been dedicated primarily to educatingSephardi Jews living in theOttoman Empire according to a modern French curriculum. As president of the AIU, Cassin worked with theAmerican Jewish Committee and theAnglo-Jewish Association to found the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations, a network dedicated to building support for Cassin's platform of human rights from a Jewish perspective[clarification needed] while the UN human rights system was in its early stages of development.[11][page needed]
In 1947, Cassin created theFrench Institute of Administrative Sciences (IFSA). He was the first president of the association, which organized many conferences to help to develop the French doctrine inadministrative law.[clarification needed]
On 10 November 1950, he was photographed at a UN radio, alongsideKarim Azkoul, Georges Day and Herald CL Roy, participating in a roundtable discussion for the use of French-speaking countries. That is perhaps all the more interesting because Azkoul and Cassin differed so strongly in their perspectives concerning the politics ofZionism.[12]
Cassin died inParis in 1976 and was initially interred at theMontparnasse Cemetery in Paris. In 1987, his remains were exhumed and enshrined in thecrypt of thePantheon in Paris.
In 2001, theCCJO René Cassin was founded in Cassin's memory to promoteuniversal human rights from a Jewish perspective.
The René Cassin Medal is awarded by the CCJO to those who have made an outstanding global contribution to human rights. As the head of the Alliance Israélite in France, Cassin had pursued civil rights for the Jews and was an active Zionist.[citation needed]
A high school inJerusalem is named after him.[citation needed][13]
In 2003, theBasque government created the René Cassin Award "with the goal of publicly acknowledging and rewarding individuals or collectives that, through their personal or professional path, showed a strong commitment to the promotion, defence and divulgation ofHuman Rights". The award is given on 10 December, which isInternational Human Rights Day.[14]
The law campus ofParis 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University is named after him.[15]
including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1968The Charter of Human Rights| International | |
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