This document provides an overview of the key sources of public international law, including treaties, custom, general principles of law, and judicial decisions. It then lists important texts and references on international law, and provides detailed guidance on finding information on treaties and customary international law, emphasizing treaty databases, digests of state practice, and official publications. Resources discussed include UNTreaty, HeinOnline, the American Society of International Law website, and the U.S. State Department website.

1. Public International Law

2. •Treaties and other international
agreements
• Custom
• General principles of law
• Judicial decisions and teachings of
qualified publicists
Sources of Public Int’l Law:

3. 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

4. Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
http://www.mpepil.com/ with older editions in print in Law Library

5. 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.
Source: Treaties

6. http://www.asil.org/resource/treaty1.htm

7. http://www.law.uga.edu/library/research/guides/treaties.html

8. name
date
citations
Check
Bluebook for
Rules re each
element
Treaties in Force
online at http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/tif/index.htm
or via Hein Online or LLMC Digital

9. http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/index.htm
important resources for recent & pending treaties

10. http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/pending/

12. Hein Online
Treaties
and
Agreements
library

13. Treaties & International Agreements Online
especially good for treaties where U.S. is party
Convention on wetlands
linked from Research
Resources page
currently not
available off-
campus

14. Treaties and Int’l Agreements Online

15. http://treaties.un.org
free

18. 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

21. citation 189 UNTS 137
Click book icon to jump to full text

23. EISIL it!

25. EISIL seeks most authoritative and stable
online source

26. The EISIL record provides useful info:
citation, link to online sources, description, etc.

27. Hein Online: not just law reviews!
Many international law resources,
including treaties

28. Linked from Law Library’s Research Resources

29. Contains official pubs, unofficial pubs,
indexes, related docs

30. Collection of bilateral and multilateral treaties from 1648-1919

31. http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multilaterals.html
Categories
reflect early
emphasis on
env’t but now
includes more

32. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/entri/index.jsp

33. Travaux Préparatoires
• the preparatory work (or
"legislative history") of a treaty
• often used for the purpose of
interpreting the treaty

34. • 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
sources for travaux préparatoires

37. GlobaLex has a good guide to
finding travaux préparatoires

38. National Treaty Law and Practice series
Title search in GAVEL
Volumes for additional
countries forthcoming

39. Frequently-cited Treaties and Other
International Instruments
but you have access through UGA
http://library.law.umn.edu/researchguides/most-cited.html

40. 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

41. 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

42. Digests of Int’l Law
digest and international law

45. (foreign and documents and canada) and
(relations or diploma? or repertory)
Sample search in GIL at Main Library
foreign documents canada
relations diploma? repertory

47. Sources of State Practice in Int’l Law
KZ64 .S67 (basement)

48. 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.

49. Oxford Reports on International Law

52. 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

55. 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

57. Don’t forget:
ILM is a good
resource for
many different
kinds of docs,
including
treaties and
domestic
legislation &
case law

58. 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