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I have no intention of listing all of Antonio Cassese�s many distinctions and achievements as one of the great international lawyers of his generation. Readers of EJIL will be familiar with all of that, and Wikipedia (a decent entry) is just one click away. It is the person behind the public figure who is of interest. One has to be personal. I met Nino for the first time in 1978. I was a young(ish) Assistant at the European University Institute. He was a Professor �down town� in Florence. Relations between the faculty at the University and the EUI on the top of the hill were frosty. At best an entente cordiale. Nino would have none of that. He embraced me and within months of my arrival invited me, first to his home, and then to contribute to a major project he was directing on Parliamentary Control of Foreign Policy. I was asked by him to write the Report on the European Communities. It was a telling moment. The late Christoph Sasse, distinguished professor of EC law from Hamburg, was indignant: �a role for a Professor, not an Assistant�. Nino had no patience for that stuff either. He really did not know me all that well and was taking a risk. But it was typical of him: reaching out, welcoming, having faith, including the young, foreigners. It galvanized me. It was, too, a lesson for life.
Planting trees together, ploughing fields, building houses, jointly creating something from nothing, all bring people together as little else does. I was privileged to build two houses together with Nino. One was this Journal � EJIL. Bruno (Simma) and I had no doubt that it should be Nino we should turn to as our Italian �partner�. He embraced the project with his typical �
