René Cassin

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Lore & Background

Cassin was born in Bayonne on 5 October 1887, to a Sephardi Jewish family. He grew up in Nice, where he attended the Lycée Masséna, and graduated with a bachelor's degree at 17. At the University of Provence 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. In 1914 in Paris, he was awarded his doctorate in juridical science, economics and politics. During the First World War, Cassin served in 1916 at the Battle 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 at Antibes. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his actions but was too seriously injured to return to active duty, and he was mustered out as a war invalid. In the interwar period, he helped to found the Union fédérale, a leftist pacifist organization for veterans, and founded the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans in 1918, serving 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. As a French delegate to the League of Nations from 1924 to 1938, Cassin pressed for progress on disarmament and for developing institutions to aid the resolution of international conflicts. Refusing the armistice, Cassin embarked on a British ship, the SS Ettrick, in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on 24 June 1940, and joined General Charles de Gaulle in London. In April 1941, Cassin made a radio broadcast from London addressing himself especially to French Jews from a secular viewpoint, reminding them of the full and equal protection that France had always offered to Jews since the French Revolution. In May, Vichy France stripped Cassin of his French citizenship and in 1942 sentenced him to death in absentia.

Reader's Guide

Cassin's significance lies primarily in his role as a major contributor to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Working from a list of rights elaborated by the Canadian scholar and professor of law John Humphrey, Cassin produced a revised draft and expanded the text. He served on the UN Human Rights Commission and the Hague Court of Arbitration. He was also a member (1959–1965) and president (1965–1968) of the European Court of Human Rights. 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-Jewish Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU). As president of the AIU, Cassin worked with the American Jewish Committee and the Anglo-Jewish Association to found the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations. In 1947, Cassin created the French Institute of Administrative Sciences (IFSA) and was its first president. On 10 November 1950, he was photographed at a UN radio, alongside Karim Azkoul, Georges Day and Herald CL Roy, participating in a roundtable discussion for the use of French-speaking countries. Cassin died in Paris in 1976 and was initially interred at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. In 1987, his remains were exhumed and enshrined in the crypt of the Pantheon in Paris. His legacy includes the CCJO René Cassin, founded in 2001 in his memory to promote universal human rights from a Jewish perspective, the René Cassin Medal awarded by the CCJO, a high school in Jerusalem named after him, the René Cassin Award created by the Basque government in 2003, and the law campus of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University named after him.

Did You Know?

• Cassin was gravely injured in the arm, side and stomach by machine gunfire at the Battle of the Meuse in 1916, and received surgical treatment only ten days later at Antibes.
• He embarked on the British ship SS Ettrick in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on 24 June 1940 to join General Charles de Gaulle in London.
• Vichy France stripped Cassin of his French citizenship in May 1941 and sentenced him to death in absentia in 1942.
• Cassin was a member (1959–1965) and president (1965–1968) of the European Court of Human Rights.
• In 1987, his remains were exhumed from Montparnasse Cemetery and enshrined in the crypt of the Pantheon in Paris.