International Legal Research

1. International Legal Research

2. What is international law? • Public international law: • Law that governs the relations between or among nations • Think UN, treaties • Private international law: • Concerns disputes between private parties in which the laws, jurisdiction or court judgments of more than one jurisdiction or country are implicated • Think conflict of laws, UNCITRAL, arbitration

3. Sources of International Law • Article 38 of the International Court of Justice statute states: • 1. The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply: • a. international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states; • b. international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; • c. the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; • d. subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law.

4. International Customary Law • “Consists of rules of law derived from the constant conduct of states acting out of the belief that the law required them to act that way” • Because there are no international “laws”, per se, countries instead behave as if there were laws to require them to behave a certain way

5. International Conventions (Treaties) • Treaty research in 5 steps • Does a treaty exist on the topic? • Find the text of the treaty • Who are the parties (bilateral or multilateral) and what is the treaty’s effective date? • Any reservations, understandings, declarations, or other conditions made by relevant parties? • Any subsequent modification to the treaty (amendments or protocols)?

6. Example #1 • Luxemburg is one of several small jurisdictions that act as tax havens to wealthy US citizens. Locate the most recent agreement between the US and Luxemburg on prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income and capital. • In what official US source can this treaty be found?

7. Example #2 • Has North Korea ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child? • If so, when did they ratify it? • Did they have any reservations, understandings, declarations, or other conditions?

8. International judicial decisions • There is no good index or digest to international legal jurisprudence • There is no concept of stare decisisin international law; therefore courts do not heavily rely on precedent (although they can consult their previous decisions under Article 38 of the ICJ statute on the sources of international law) • The body of case law is substantially smaller than domestic jurisdictions and is therefore more easily located • Best place to locate a citation is through a secondary source • Law journals, ILM, books, etc • Max Planck Encyclopedia

9. Locating International decisions • Avoid Lexis/WL—almost all decisions of int’l bodies and related procedural documents are available FREE on the court/tribunal’s website • The International Court of Justice’s website has full-text PDFs of all judgments and procedural documents—this link lists all cases brought before the ICJ in chronological order: http://www.icj-cij.org

10. Retrieve relevant case from the ICJ website

12. If you have a judgment year, change the list to reflect the date of culmination Be sure you know whether you are looking for a contentious case or an advisory proceeding

13. Locate relevant case—in this example, I found it by judgment date. You could always do a CTRL+F for the country involved as well

14. Click on whichever type of document you are trying to find—i.e., in our example, we are looking for page 37 of the Judgment, so we would click on “Judgments” and then select the first PDF

15. This is an exact copy of what was printed in the official reporter, with the same pagination. It can (and, in my opinion, should) be considered an authentic full-text source.

16. European Union Information

17. EU Legislation • Regulations • most direct form of EU law - as soon as they are passed, they have binding legal force throughout every Member State, on a par with national laws. National governments do not have to take action themselves to implement EU regulations. • Directives • lay down certain end results that must be achieved in every Member State. National authorities have to adapt their laws to meet these goals, but are free to decide how to do so. Directives may concern one or more Member States, or all of them. • Decisions • EU laws relating to specific cases. They can come from the EU Council (sometimes jointly with the European Parliament) or the Commission. • Recommendations/Opinions (no binding force)

18. How to Find EU Legislation • Current/enacted legislation: • Official Journal (on Eur-Lex) • Eur-Lex: • http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm • Lexis (EURCOM;LEGIS) • Westlaw (EU-LEG) • Proposed legislation: • Pre-Lex • http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/apcnet.cfm?CL=en • Legislative Observatory • http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/index.jsp?language=en

19. Official Journal • The OJ has been published since 1967 as two main series: L (Legislation) and C (Communication = Information and Notices). Both series are published almost daily and in the 23 official languages. • Some items are listed on the index in bold and others are not. The latter are of less importance and usually concern agricultural matters. • The OJ is arranged in two sequences which are described as “Acts whose publication is obligatory” (mainly Regulations and Directives) and “Acts whose publication is not obligatory” (mainly Decisions).

20. Example #3 • Locate the authentic full text version of this cite: 1998 O.J. (C 402) 24 • What was the date that this document was published?

21. Court of Justice of the European Union • Three main competencies: • reviews the legality of the acts of the institutions of the European Union, • ensures that the Member States comply with obligations under the Treaties, and • interprets European Union law at the request of the national courts and tribunals • Consists of three courts: • the Court of Justice • the General Court (formerly known as the Court of First Instance, created in 1988) • the Civil Service Tribunal (created in 2004).

22. Where to find EU cases & decisions • European Court Reports (E.C.R.) [official] • Where cases relate to the same issue, they may be joined so that several case numbers will be attached to a single ECR citation. Since 1990 the Reports have been split into two parts in each issue. Part I contains the ECJ cases and Part II contains the CFI/GC cases. • Print only: KJE924.5 .R47 • Eur-Lex • http://eur-lex.europa.eu/RECH_jurisprudence.do • Curia • http://curia.europa.eu/ • Common Market Law Reports • Print only: KJE923.7 .C66

23. Example #5 • “Would you please send me the ECJ judgment in Kanal 5 (2008). Thanks.” • When looking for a case, try starting with Curia, the European Courts’ official website. You can also search case law using Eur-Lex • Is there an official version available? • Eur-Lex provides ECR citations, but there is no electronic version of the ECR version as of yet

24. Curia’s simple search box on the front page makes it easy to locate cases using basic data—in this instance, we know the name of the party (Kanal 5—but only input “Kanal” incase the decision spells out the number), the court (Court of Justice), and the date (2008, although with the distinctive party name we probably don’t even need the date)

25. Be sure you are aware of which result is the one that you want—for example, the OJ cite “looks” official but is only a summary of the judgement, not the actual full text. Also, be aware of the difference between the judgment and the Advocate Generals’ Opinion (which preceeds the actual judgment)

26. Unofficial (but reliable) full text of the judgement

27. Now that you have the case number (C-52/07) you can easily retrieve the case through Eur-Lex; it will not give you the official version, but will give you the cite to the official reporter This is the official reporter citation---2008 ECR I-9275

28. United Nations Information

29. UN Documents

30. How to locate UN documents • If you already have a citation (e.g. A/63/950), use the “Search by symbol” feature of the UN Documentation system: http://www.un.org/en/documents/. • If you do not know the document symbol, scroll down on this page and choose the body and type of document which you are looking for (i.e., General Assembly – Resolutions) and you will be taken to the appropriate page

31. Locating documents on the UN site

32. Locating General Assembly resolutions • From the main “Documents” page, scroll down under “General Assembly” and select “Resolutions”

33. Locating General Assembly resolutions • Then select the GA session the document was issued in

34. Since resolutions are listed in chronological order, use CTRL+F to find your keyword on the page Voting records are also linked