In Memoriam: Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade (1947–2022)

Abstract

1. I must apologize at the outset that this eulogy for Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade is very personal.1 I first met Antônio in the summer of 1974 at the Centre for Studies and Research of the Hague Academy of International Law. In the following summer in 1975, we both participated in the International Law Seminar organized by the UN International Law Commission (ILC). We had become very good friends ever since. I was a member of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy in 2004 to 2016, overlapping his membership during those years, when we met at least twice a year either in The Hague or in Paris. In recent years, it was my joy to meet him at the biannual meetings of the Institut de Droit International (IDI). In connection with this Journal, we served together as members of the Board of Honorary Editors for a long time. 2. When I first met him in 1974, he was telling me that he had been writing his PhD dissertation at Cambridge on Developments in the Rule of Exhaustion of Local Remedies in International Law, which was 1,700 pages. After this, I heard that the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge had to decide to change the regulations to limit the length of PhD dissertation to 100,000 words. He published the dissertation in 1977 in 2 volumes. This was the beginning of his career as a prolific writer who ultimately authored 30 books and 475 monographs and articles. His last major publication was International Law for Humankind: Towards a New Jus Gentium, the revised and adapted version of his General Course on Public International Law of the Hague Academy of International Law (Monograph 10, 3rd ed., 2020), an earlier edition of which was reviewed in this Journal (17 Chinese JIL (2018), 1155–1158).