René Cassin

Rene Cassin was married to Simone Yzombard of Marseilles.

He died on 20 February 1976 in Paris, France.

In 2003, the Basque 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 of Human Rights".

René Samuel Cassin was born on 5 October 1887 in Bayonne, Basque Country, France, to Gabrielle (Dreyfus) Cassin and Henri Cassin. His father was a French-Jewish merchant.

He was a brilliant student and excelled in his studies at the Lycée of Nice. He then joined the University of Aix-en-Provence for his advanced studies and received a degree in the humanities, along with one in law, in 1908. He furthered his education to earn his doctorate in juridical, economic, and political sciences in 1914.

During the World War I, he was inducted into the infantry in 1914. Fighting in the war, he sustained severe injuries in 1916 by German shrapnel. He was on the verge of death but survived miraculously. The injury remained uncomfortable for the rest of his life, a continuous remainder of the horrors of the war.

He embarked on a career as a professor of law at Aix late in 1916. He moved to Lille as a law professor in 1920 and to the chair of fiscal and civil law at the University of Paris in 1929. He remained there until his retirement from formal teaching in 1960.

His career as a professor was a highly successful one. He travelled to several countries on various scholarly assignments and lectured at the National School of Overseas Territories and at the Academy of International Law at The Hague, and undertook academic missions in Europe, French Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East.

Meanwhile he also became involved in pacifist activities and served as a French delegate to the League of Nations assemblies and disarmament conferences in Geneva from 1924 to 1938. He was a prolific writer and wrote extensively on legal matters especially those pertaining to aspects of human rights.

During the World War II, he served as the commissioner of public instruction. After France was liberated in 1945, he became president of the Council of the National School of Administration.

Rene Cassin is best remembered for the role he played in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, working from the original writing of John Humphrey. The declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. He received several prestigious awards for this work.