Key Journals
- The American Journal of International Law
- International & Comparative Law Quarterly
- European Journal of International Law
- The British Year Book of International Law
Teaching International Legal Research: Some Useful Resources
Prepared by Marci Hoffman, U.C. Berkeley Law School Library
I. Books
- GUIDE TO INTERNATIONAL LEGAL RESEARCH (LexisNexis, 2002).
- HOFFMAN & RUMSEY, INTERNATIONAL AND FOREIGN LEGAL RESEARCH: A COURSEBOOK (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007), http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/staff/mhoffman/iflrbook/.
- HOFFMAN & BERRING, INTERNATIONAL LEGAL RESEARCH IN A NUTSHELL (forthcoming, West, 2008).
- SPANG-HANSSEN & LOMIO, LEGAL RESEARCH METHODS IN THE U.S. & EUROPE (DJØF Publishing, 2007), see also http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1102293.
- WINER & ARCHER, A BASIC COURSE IN PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW RESEARCH (University Press of America, 2005).
II. Research Guides
Many of these guides can be used as teaching tools in-class or added to a course website.
Most law school libraries with large international collections provide many topical research guides -- here are a few good collections of guides:
- http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/online/guides/internationalForeign.html
- http://www.law.columbia.edu/library/Research_Guides
- http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/research/browse_topics.cfm
- http://local.law.umn.edu/library/pathfinders-directory.html
- http://www.law.yale.edu/library/firesources.asp
- http://www.law.nyu.edu/library/research_guides.html
III. Other Sources
All of these sources are freely available and can be used in class or modified for a session on legal research.
- Electronic Information System for International Law (EISIL)
- International Legal Research Tutorial
- An interactive tutorial with review questions: Syllabi & Course Materials Collection
- A collection of tools for teaching international legal research: Jumpstart Your Foreign, Comparative, and International Research: Use People Resources
- Need an idea of how to teach legal research on a topic, see this list of experts: National Legal Research Teach-In
- A collection of tools for teaching legal research, includes some international and foreign law tools. See earlier teach-in materials, also linked from this page: Legal Research Text Annotated Bibliography (2006)
Publications by Members
The International Law Section is glad to announce members' publications. Please send details to Lorna Lloyd, the website manager, at l.lloyd@keele.ac.uk
- Ian Hurd, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Northwestern University: After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power at the UN Security Council (Princeton 2007).
The politics of legitimacy is central to international law and organization. When states perceive an international organization as legitimate, they defer to it, associate themselves with it, and invoke its symbols. Examining the United Nations Security Council, Ian Hurd demonstrates how legitimacy is created, used, and contested in international relations and international law. The Council's authority depends on its legitimacy, and therefore its legitimation and delegitimation are of the highest importance to states.
Through an examination of the politics of the Security Council, including the Iraq invasion and the negotiating history of the United Nations Charter, Hurd shows that when states use the Council's legitimacy for their own purposes, they reaffirm its stature and find themselves contributing to its authority. Case studies of the Libyan sanctions, peacekeeping efforts, and the symbolic politics of the Council demonstrate how the legitimacy of the Council shapes world politics and how legitimated authority can be transferred from states to international organizations. With authority shared between states and other institutions, the interstate system is not a realm of anarchy. Sovereignty is distributed among institutions that have power because they are perceived as legitimate.
This book's innovative approach to international organizations and international relations theory lends new insight into interactions between sovereign states and the United Nations, and between legitimacy and the exercise of power in international relations.
- Simon Chesterman, The UN Security Council and the Rule of Law
In April 2008 NewYork University School of Law's Institute for International Law and Justice and the Austrian Government launched a policy report entitled "The UN Security Council and the Rule of Law". The report recognizes that the Security Council has grown beyond its initial function as a political forum and frequently serves important legal functions. At the same time, there is a widely perceived need for the Council to ground these new functions in a normative framework that is both legitimate and effective. This report maps out how it might go about doing so, building on four years of meetings with experts and practitioners.
The report, including the preface by by the Austrian Minister for European and International Affairss, can be downloaded from Austria's Minister for European and International Affairs: http://www.bmeia.gv.at/newyorkov
For a more academic take on the idea of the rule of law as it applies at the international level, see Prof Chesterman's article, "An International Rule of Law?", published in the April 2008 American Journal of Comparative Law.
