Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade: An unwavering quest for international justice and for the universalization and humanization of international law

Abstract

On 29 May 2022, our eminent colleague Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade passed away in Brasilia, Brazil, after an extended illness. The International Court of Justice lost a unique and singular judge who was profoundly committed to justice among nations big and small, to the protection of the dignity of human beings whatever may be their station in life, and to the safeguarding of humanity and its home planet. International law lost one of its most distinguished, most productive, and most creative scholars. I lost a dear friend whom I had known for almost 50 years, and for whom I always had a lot of affection and admiration. Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1947. He obtained his first degree in law from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), where he initially developed his interest in international law. He decided to pursue this interest at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he obtained a Master’s degree and a PhD in international law. His doctoral thesis on the application of the rule of exhaustion of local remedies in international law was awarded the Yorke prize. It was also a prelude to his plentiful writing on international law as the thesis consisted of two volumes and 1,700 pages. It was later published by Cambridge University Press (1983, 443 pages) and has since become a work of reference in this area.1 This was not, however, his first book. He published his Fundamentos jurídicos dos direitos humanos, which reflected his life-long passion for human rights, in 1969 in Brazil.2 He went on to publish, before his death, 78 books and more than 790 articles and other publications, thus becoming one of the most prolific writers on international law in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Having completed his studies in Cambridge, UK, Cançado Trindade went back to Brazil where he was appointed professor of public international law at the University of Brasilia in 1978, and a year later at the Rio Branco diplomatic academy where he taught several generations of Brazilian lawyers and diplomats. From then onwards, he devoted his life to the study, teaching and dissemination of international law and to the promotion and protection of human rights. For him the two were intrinsically intertwined, since, in his view, the ultimate purpose of law, and of international law in particular, was the protection of human rights and the promotion of human welfare. His career was thus marked by a constant endeavour for the humanization of international law.