Public International Law
Sources of Public Int’l Law:
•Treaties and other international
agreements
• Custom
• General principles of law
• Judicial decisions and teachings of
qualified publicists
Key Texts in International Law
• Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law
• Oppenheim, International Law
• Shaw, International Law
Remember you can
do author/title
searches in GAVEL
Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
http://www.mpepil.com/ with older editions in print in Law Library
Source: Treaties
Resources:
• Bluebook lists official and unofficial cites
• depends on whether U.S. is a party and
number of parties
• use treaty indexes and databases to get
citations
• databases: TIARA, UN Treaties, Westlaw
& Lexis
• Web resources: Tufts, ENTRI, EISIL,
Hein Online, etc.
http://www.asil.org/resource/treaty1.htm
http://www.law.uga.edu/library/research/guides/treaties.html
Treaties in Force
online at http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/tif/index.htm
or via Hein Online or LLMC Digital
name
date
citations
Check
Bluebook for
Rules re each
element
http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/index.htm
important resources for recent & pending treaties
http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/pending/
Hein Online
Treaties
and
Agreements
library
Treaties & International Agreements Online
especially good for treaties where U.S. is party
Convention on wetlands
linked from Research
Resources page
currently not
available offcampus
Treaties and Int’l Agreements Online
http://treaties.un.org
free
Use this to determine when adopted or concluded,
who has signed and/or ratified and when, who has
denounced, when it entered into force, any
declarations or reservations, and more
Click book icon to jump to full text
citation 189 UNTS 137
EISIL it!
EISIL seeks most authoritative and stable
online source
The EISIL record provides useful info:
citation, link to online sources, description, etc.
Hein Online: not just law reviews!
Many international law resources,
including treaties
Linked from Law Library’s Research Resources
Contains official pubs, unofficial pubs,
indexes, related docs
Collection of bilateral and multilateral treaties from 1648-1919
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multilaterals.html
Categories
reflect early
emphasis on
env’t but now
includes more
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/entri/index.jsp
Travaux Préparatoires
• the preparatory work (or
"legislative history") of a treaty
• often used for the purpose of
interpreting the treaty
sources for travaux préparatoires
• Check GAVEL: keyword search the name of the
treaty and (travaux or preparatory or congress
or history or negotiations or negotiating history),
etc.
• Treaty documents collected by an international
organization
• international conference web sites
• Yearbooks of international law
GlobaLex has a good guide to
finding travaux préparatoires
National Treaty Law and Practice series
Title search in GAVEL
Volumes for additional
countries forthcoming
Frequently-cited Treaties and Other
International Instruments
http://library.law.umn.edu/researchguides/most-cited.html
but you have access through UGA
Source: Custom
Resources: your objective is to find
evidence of state practice
• records of state’s foreign relations
• domestic court decisions
• domestic legislation
• resolutions, declarations of int orgs
Where do I find these types of evidence?
• documents on foreign or int’l
relations
• digests, e.g. Digest of United
States Practice in International Law
• repertories of practice
• yearbooks
• International Legal Materials
• Web - State Department and
corollaries in other countries
Digests of Int’l Law
digest and international law
Sample search in GIL at Main Library
foreign documents canada
relations diploma? repertory
(foreign and documents and canada) and
(relations or diploma? or repertory)
Sources of State Practice in Int’l Law
KZ64 .S67 (basement)
references to:
•treaty collections
•sources of diplomatic
documentation
•other materials that shed
light on customary state
practice in international
law, including yearbooks
and digests
•relevant web sites
Currently covers 15
jurisdictions with plans to
add more.
Oxford Reports on International Law
Avalon Project at Yale
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp
"Documents in Law, History & Diplomacy"
• digitized
• doesn't provide citations
• does provide hyperlinks to referenced docs
U.S. State Dept. Office of the Historian
"Foreign Relations of the United States" database
http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments
• 30+ historians
• declassifying documents
• compiling documentary history of
foreign relations in the U.S.
• currently 480+ volumes and growing
Don’t forget:
ILM is a good
resource for
many different
kinds of docs,
including
treaties and
domestic
legislation &
case law
Bluebooking International
Agreements
• Rule 21.4 & the abbreviation tables
• can be time-consuming
• lots of details: name, parties, date,
source
• may need to look several places to
get all of the information
• pay attention to all citation elements