EDUCATION, UNIVERSALITY AND HUMANISM: THE HUMAN PERSON AND THE MISSION OF INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS | DOI: 10.12818/P.0304-2340.2018v72p135

Abstract

The birth and historical evolution of Universities around the world have been attached to
the universal cultivation of the humanities. Universitas and humanitas go together, with
humanists always attentive to the centrality of fundamental human values. Universities have
a spiritual dimension. The cycle of U.N. World Conferences focused on living conditions of
the population everywhere. There is need of a people-centred outlook in contemporary
international law. Contemporary international tribunals have acknowledged the relevance
of general principles of law. Such principles are a manifestation of the universal juridical
conscience, the ultimate material source of all law. An objective law is thus conformed, on
solid foundations (and well beyond the “will” of individual States), in the line of jusnaturalist
thinking.