European University Institute Library

René Cassin and human rights, from the Great War to the Universal Declaration, Jay Winter and Antoine Prost

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

René Cassin and human rights

bibliography

809420880

Jay Winter and Antoine Prost

Human rights in history

from the Great War to the Universal Declaration

"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 70 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"--, provided by publisher

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. Republican legality and the return to peace: 1943-44. -- 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. Vice-president of the Conseil d'Etat. -- 11. A Jewish life. -- Conclusion