One of the greatest Dutch international lawyers that ever lived, a true successor of Hugo Grotius, Judge Peter Kooijmans, passed away on Wednesday, 13 February 2013. In 1996, Kooijmans was elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He retired in 2006, after having served a full term of nine years. Before that he was Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University for decades. In fact, he started as early as in the 1960s, and wrote a handbook which is still in use today. Besides being an academic, he was also a politician, serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1993 and 1994. He was also active for the United Nations, most importantly as UN Special Rapporteur on torture with the UN Commission on Human Rights. I had the pleasure of meeting him in person numerous times. The first time was when he attended a national workshop through which my PhD supervisors – Prof. Nico Schrijver and Dr. Koos van der Bruggen – and myself wanted to introduce our research topic, the role of the United Nations in the evolution of global values, to the Dutch academic community. I remember when he walked into the room, everybody was honored by his presence. He was a very tall man, and thus he had no difficulty standing out from any crowd! He will be greatly missed.