Realizing Utopia: The Future of International Law

Antonio Cassese

mar 2012 · OUP Oxford

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Realizing Utopia is a collection of essays by a group of innovative international jurists. Its contributors reflect on some of the major legal problems facing the international community and analyse the inconsistencies or inadequacies of current law. They highlight the elements - even if minor, hidden, or emerging - that are likely to lead to future changes or improvements. Finally, they suggest how these elements can be developed, enhanced, and brought to fruition in the next two or three decades, with a view to achieving an improved architecture of world society or, at a minimum, to reshaping some major aspects of international dealings. Contributions to the book thus try to discern the potential, in the present legal construct of world society, that might one day be brought to light in a better world. As the impact of international law on national legal orders continues to increase, this volume takes stock of how far international law has come and how it should continue to develop. The work features an impressive list of contributors, including many of the leading authorities on international law and several judges of the International Court of Justice.

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Antonio Cassese was Professor of International Law at the University of Florence until 2008. He is a member of the Institut de Droit International, and former President of the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture. He was the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), serving in this capacity from 1993 to 1997 and then as the presiding judge of trial chambers until 2000. In October 2004, Cassese was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to be the Chairperson of the UN International Commission of Enquiry into Violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Darfur. In 2006 the United Nations Secretary-General appointed him as an independent expert tasked to review the judicial efficiency of the Special Court of Sierra Leone. In March 2009 Cassese was appointed by United Nations as judge for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) where he was elected President of the Tribunal.