Acknowledgements (1)

In: New Trends in International Law
Author:
Hisashi Owada
Search for other papers by Hisashi Owada in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Free access

In expressing my deep gratitude to all of my friends who have offered their contribution that have made the publication of this Festschrift possible, the first person I have to mention is Professor Cheng Chia Jui, the Eitor-in-Chief of the publication. Professor Cheng has been the Secretary-General of the Xiamen Academy of International Law of which I have been an original member of the Curatorium, while concurrently professor of international law at Soochow University. It was due entirely to Professor Cheng, a long-time friend of mine both academically and personally, who came up with the idea of compiling a Festschrift in honour of my service as judge of the International Court of Justice at my retirement. During the past few years, Professor Cheng has sacrificed much of his time in persuading my colleagues at the i.c.j. and other friends of mine to cooperate with this project by their contributions, in editing the amassed manuscripts for contribution and in holding consultations with the publisher, Nijhoff of The Hague. Without his incredible devotion, this book would not have seen the light of the day.

It goes without saying, however, that the Festschrift would not have been born in the present form without the ardent support of friendship of my many dear friends who have shared with me a commitment to attaining our common goal for the rule of law in the international community. Naturally their respective approaches to achieving this goal could not be the same, as one can easily decern by reading their articles contained in the Festschrift; I believe, however, that what matters is not so much the diversity in our approaches, as the unity in our common commitment to consolidate the minimum public order of our community of mankind. I wish to express my deep gratitude to all my friends who have taken their time to put their thoughts on this fundamental problem into their respective contributions to the Festschrift.

Looking back over the 70 years of my professional life, I cannot help feeling how fortunate I have been to spend my entire life working in this area of “interface between the normative framework of international relations, i.e. the world of international law, and the geopolitical realities of international relations, i.e. the world of international politics”. In this respect. I wish to offer my acknowledgement that I owe much to the environment in which I have had opportunities to go through diverse experiences, including the days of doctoral studies with my academic mentors at Cambridge, the years of apprenticeship guided by my colleagues in the practice of diplomacy in the Foreign Ministry of Japan, the time I spent with my students who often have inspired my thoughts at various universities that I taught in diverse parts of the world, and finally the period of my judgeship at the International Court of Justice where I encountered many of my friends and was inspired by discussing with them.

I wish finally to close this short list of my acknowledgement by registering here, if not inappropriate, my deep thanks to all the members of my family; Yumiko, my wife who has unified her entire married life with me by dedicating her time to enable me to develop my professional life as I wished; Masako, Reiko and Setsuko, my dear three daughters who all have inherited in their different ways my own dreams and have found their way of life in the world.

Hisashi Owada

  • Collapse
  • Expand

New Trends in International Law

Festschrift in Honour of Judge Hisashi Owada

Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 0 0 0
Full Text Views 21 21 1
PDF Views & Downloads 0 0 0