Antonio Cassese
1937
Antonio Cassese was born in Atripalda (Avellino- Italy), second son of Leopoldo Cassese and Bianca Castellucci, but he grew up in Salerno (Italy).
His father Leopoldo was the director of the state archives of Salerno and L'Aquila.
He taught archivistics at the Universities of Naples and Rome, studied peasant movements and was educated on the books of Benedetto Croce. His mother Bianca was a teacher of literature in high schools.
1937
1954
After obtaining his classical high school diploma, at the age of 17 - after an examination that he described as very severe - Antonio Cassese moved to Pisa where he was admitted to the medical-legal College of the Scuola normale di Pisa (now the Scuola Sant'Anna).
He graduated with a thesis on self-determination of peoples, supervised by Professor Giuseppe Sperduti. On the subject of that dissertation, Antonio Cassese later published a monographic work entitled Self Determination of People - A legal Reappraisal (Cambridge University Press, 1999), winner of the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for Creative Scholarship.
1954
From 1970
Antonio Cassese began his academic career in 1972, as a professor at the University of Pisa. In 1975, he obtained a position at the University of Florence, at the Faculty of Political Science ‘Cesare Alfieri’, where he taught until his retirement in 2008. From 1987 to 1993 he was professor of International Law at the European University Institute, where he co-founded the European Journal of International Law and the Academy of European Law.
In the 70s, Antonio Cassese also started to represent Italy in various international fora, such as the UN Commission on Human Rights (1972-75), the UN General Assembly (1974, 1975, 1978), and the Geneva Diplomatic Conference on International Humanitarian Law (1974-77). In the seventies he was also involved in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Right of Peoples (1976) and in the creation of the Permanent Court of Peoples (1972)
1970
From 1983 to 1993
He chaired the Steering Committee for Human Rights of the Council of Europe.
In 1984, he became the first President of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of the Council of Europe, where he served until 1993.
The experience as President of the Committee led to his book Umano-Disumano: Commissariati e prigioni nell'Europa di oggi (Laterza, 1994), also published in English with the title Inhuman States: Imprisonment, Detention and Torture in Europe Today (Polity Press, 1996).
1980
From 1993 to 2000
In 1993, Antonio Cassese was elected as judge of the newly established International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He served as first President of the Tribunal from 1993 to 1997, and then as President of one of the Trial Chamber until 2000.
As a judge of the ICTY, he contributed to the writing of key decision and judgments of the ICTY. Among them, the 1995 Interlocutory Decision on Jurisdiction in the Tadić case stands out. In this decision, the Appeals Chamber of the Tribunal established that individual criminal responsibility for war crimes is not limited to international armed conflict, but it extends also to so-called civil wars.
1990
From 2000-2009
After leaving the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Cassese returned to teach at the University of Florence, at the Faculty of Political Science ‘Cesare Alfieri’ and devoted himself to a variety of academic projects to strengthen and disseminate the study of international criminal law. These include the publication as co-editor of the first Commentary to the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (2002), the first edition of his textbook International Criminal Law (2003), and the establishment of the Journal of International Criminal Justice (the first volume of which was published in 2003), and the Oxford Companion to International Criminal Justice (2009).
During this period he was also the holder of the International Research Chair ‘Blaise Pascal’ (University of Paris-Sorbonne) (2001-2002), which led to the editing with Mireille Delmas Marty of two volumes in French on international crimes and international and domestic criminal justice (Juridictions nationales et crimes internationaux, PUF, 2002; Crimes internationaux et juridictions internationales, PUF, 2002).
From 2003 to 2006 he directed the Ethics Project, a three-year project financed by the European Commission and managed by the European University Institute, for high-level training of national judges and prosecutors in international criminal law, with particular reference to the International Criminal Court.
During these years, Cassese continued his activities outside the university, accepting prestigious assignments. He was the Chairman of the UN International Commission of Inquiry into Genocide in Darfur (Sudan) (appointed by the UN Secretary Kofi Annan on 7 October 2004), whose Report was delivered on 25 January 2005 (UN doc. S/2005/60). In 2006, he was appointed by the Un Secretary General as an Independent Expert with the task of reviewing the efficiency of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Report delivered on 12 December 2006). He was also the Co-Chairman (with M.Bedjaoui) of the Working Group of Experts on Universal Jurisdiction established by the European Union and the African Union (2008-2009). The report was delivered on 16 April 2009.
2000
2009-2011
In March 2009, Cassese was elected as a judge and the first president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
He served in this role until shortly before his death. During his tenure, he played a key role in drafting the Appeals Chamber’s Interlocutory Decision on the Applicable Law (16 February 2011). This landmark decision affirmed, among other findings, the existence of a customary international definition of the crime of international terrorism during peacetime.
2009
ARCHIVES
The European University Institute maintains archives of the work of Mr. Cassese.
The material showcased reflects Antonio Cassese’s professional career as researcher, professor of international law, legal expert on human rights and judge in important international courts of law.