René Cassin and Human Rights
From the Great War to the Universal Declaration

Presents a new interpretation of the history of human rights through the biography of a key player in the movement.

Jay Winter (Author), Antoine Prost (Author)

9781107032569, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 May 2013

397 pages, 42 b/w illus.
23.3 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm, 0.79 kg

'… a thorough, engaging, and informative account of the life of Rene Cassin … Well researched and written this book shows why Cassin's mortal remains now rest in the Pantheon, the ultimate French honor to the country's major figures. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.' D. P. Forsythe, Choice

Through the life of one extraordinary man, this biography reveals what the term human rights meant to the men and women who endured two world wars, and how this major political and intellectual movement ultimately inspired and enshrined the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. René Cassin was a man of his generation, committed to moving from war to peace through international law, and whose work won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. His life crossed all the major events of the first seventy years of the twentieth century, and illustrates the hopes, aspirations, failures and achievements of an entire generation. It shows how today's human rights regimes emerged from the First World War as a pacifist response to that catastrophe and how, after 1945, human rights became a way to go beyond the dangers of absolute state sovereignty, helping to create today's European project.

Introduction to the English edition
Part I. In the Shadow of the Great War: 1. Family and education, 1887–1914
2. The Great War and its aftermath
3. Cassin in Geneva
4. From nightmare to reality: 1936–1940
Part II. The Jurist of Free France: 5. Free France: 1940–41
6. World war: 1941–43
7. Restoring the Republican legal order: the 'Comité Juridique'
8. Freeze frame: René Cassin in 1944
Part III. The Struggle for Human Rights: 9. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: origins and echoes
10. The vice-president of the Conseil d'Etat, 1944–1960
11. A Jewish life
Conclusion
An essay on sources.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]