Today is the anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.  You can see an image of the Treaty on the National Archives website.

Per the National Archives, "the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an official end to the Mexican-American War (1846–48), was signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a city to which the Mexican government had fled with the advance of U.S. forces.  Signed on February 2, 1848, this treaty ended the war between the United States and Mexico.  By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including parts of present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, to the United States."  In sum, Mexico ceded 525,000 square miles (55% of its pre-war territory, not including Texas) to the United States in exchange for $15 million ($313 million in 2006 dollars).

The library has several items specific to the treaty including:

• The Treaty of Guadalupe: A Legacy of Conflict (1990)
  
• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: 1848-1948 (1948)
  
• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Message of the President of the United States, transmitting a communication from the Secretary of State, and accompanying papers, in compliance with resolutions of the House of Representatives, of the 5th Instant, relative to the Treat of Peace concluded at Guadalupe Hidalgoon the 2d of February, 1848 (1848)

The Library of Congress has assigned a subject heading for material related to this treaty: Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 1848. 

Yale's Avalon Project also has the full-text of the treaty.

U.S. Treaties prior to 1950, such as the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (9 Stat. 922), were published in the Statutes at Large.  Volume 64, Part 3, contains an Index of all treaties ratified by the United States prior to 1950. 

Treaties to which the U.S. is a party are now published in United States Treaties and other International Agreements.

http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~walters/web%20103/map%20guadalupe%20hidalgo.gif

The Law Library has received a gift of Japanese law treatises from alumnus, Richard W. Rabinowitz, B.A. (Yale, '47), LL.B. (YLS, '50), M.A. (Yale, '51) and his widow, Janice Rabinowitiz. 

The gift consists of a collection of treatises on Japanese legal history, international investment law and Japanese commercial/business law written in English as well as in Japanese.  The Japanese language materials include multi-volume series comprising annotated codes and treatises on a wide range of legal topics: Gendai hōritsugaku zenshū published by Seirinshoin and Hōritsugaku zenshū published by Yūhikaku.  They will be wonderful additions to our foreign law collection.

Kluwer Arbitration is now available via IP Access on the CCH IntelliConnect platform. You must register though it is very quick -- just email and password.

According to CCH:

Kluwer Arbitration is the world's leading online resource for international commercial arbitration research. It contains a wealth of commentary from expert practitioner authors and an extensive collection of primary source materials. It is a comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date arbitration library that is designed for quick and simple browsing and searching. Kluwer Arbitration includes case law, commentary, conventions, legislation and rules. This resource has been recently expanded with an Investment Arbitration section. This section provides a wealth of fully searchable investment materials.

We will run this database on a one-year trial basis so if you use this database, please let us know -- and let us know what you think of it!

Send any feed back to Teresa Miguel or Fred Shapiro.

HeinOnline's Blog this week has a nice entry on the Treaty of Lisbon with links to finding scholarly articles about the "Road to Lisbon" and other EU treaties.

Briefly, Czech President Vaclav Klaus ratified the Treaty of Lisbon on November 3, 2009.  The Czech Republic was the final Member State to ratify the Treaty.  The instrument of ratification was deposited in Rome on November 13, 2009 and will enter into force on December 1, 2009.  The new EU presidency and other top jobs have now been filled.  The EU's Europa database has indepth treatment of the Treaty of Lisbon.

The EU's "Your Guide to the Lisbon Treaty" highlights several prinipal provisions of the treaty:

1. More democracy, more openness: The Treaty gives you a stronger voice in decision-making.

2. Faster, more efficient decision-making: The Lisbon Treaty streamlines the EU’s decision-making procedures.

3. Modernising the EU’s institutions: A key aim of the Lisbon Treaty is to modernise the institutions that run the EU’s business and makes them more democratic.

4. Economic policy: The Lisbon Treaty confi rms the commitment to achieving economic and monetary union with the euro as the EU’s currency.

5. Th e European Union in the world: The EU pledges to promote the values of the EU in the world by contributing to:

• peace and security;
• sustainable development of the Earth;
• solidarity and mutual respect among peoples;
• free and fair trade;
• eradication of poverty;
• protection of human rights;
• respect for and enhancement of international law as defi ned, in particular, in the United Nations Charter.

6. Security and defence: The Lisbon Treaty spells out more clearly the EU’s role in the area of common foreign and security policy. Decisions on defence issues will continue to need unanimous approval of the 27 EU Member States.

7. Justice and crime: The Lisbon Treaty contains important new provisions strengthening the EU’s ability to fi ght international cross-border crime, illegal immigration, traffi cking of people, arms and drugs.

8. Social policy: The Lisbon Treaty steps up the EU’s social objectives. It provides that, in all its policies and actions, the EU will take into account the promotion of a high level of employment.

9. New areas of cooperation: The Lisbon Treaty has important provisions in a number of new policy areas reinforcing the EU’s ability to fi ght international cross-border crime, illegal immigration, traffi cking of women and children, drugs and arms.

10. Human rights: The Lisbon Treaty recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and makes the charter legally binding.

The law library also has a fine selection of material related to the Lisbon Treaty and the EU.  See, for example:

• The Lisbon Treaty: EU Constitutionalism without a Constitutional Treaty? KJE4443.32007 .L57 2008
• Dividing Lines between the European Union and its Member States: The Impact of the Treaty of Lisbon. KJE4443.32007 .S54 2008
• Comprendre le Traité de Lisbonne: Texte Consolidé Intégral de Traités: Explications et Commentaires. KJE970 .S28 2008

The current official website of International Criminal Court (ICC) has comprehensive research resources including basic legal texts relevant to doing research relating to ICC.  The Official Journal includes the full text of the Rome Statute, the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, and Regulations of the Court. Key filings, transcripts as well as decisions can also be searched by party names and docket here. The UN Secretariat ceased to serve as the ICC Secretariat in 2003 when the Permanent Secretariat of the assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute was established but the pre-2003 website of the Court contains documents on the drafting history of the Rome Statute and notes from the Preparatory Commission. 

The website ICL Database and Commentary provides a basic research tool which links international criminal law cases with its corresponding legal texts in the Rome Statute and commentary. More treatises and commentaries can be found in L1 of the Law Library with the call number KZ6310.  In Morris, one can locate these titles by doing an advanced search by subject heading phrase "International Criminal Court" combined with word in the subject "History" for its drafting history and combined with word in the subject "Rules and Practice" for procedural materials.

Other relevant secondary sources include reports from NGOs such as the War Crimes Research Office, International Bar Association's IBA/ICC Monitoring Report, Victims Rights Working Group.

Feliz Dieciocho, Chile!

Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, also sends her congratulations to Chile today, on its 199th anniversary of independence. 

Not only is Chile know for its wines, but it is also one of the top five legal publishers in Latin America. Our Country-by-Country page contains several Chilean legal research guides to help you get started. Additionally, if you venture down to the Lower East Side, head to LC Call Number KHF where you can have a look at our Chilean legal collection, including current Chilean laws and the Civil Code of Chile in English. You can browse the collection in Morris.  Look at the Latin American Journals & Serials page for a quick glance at our holdings in Chile.  We even have a few Chilean DVDs.

Legal databases containing Chilean legal material include vLex and InterAm (subscription databases) and SciELO (open access).

Of course, for additional research assistance, please contanct the reference department.

Que lo pases bien!

The latest issue of Max Planck Institute's Zeitschrift für Chinesisches Recht includes a comprehensive bibliography of academic writings in Western languages published in 2008.  See here (Bibliography2009.pdf) for the bibliography compiled by Knut Pissler.

To locate the full-text articles, check Morris for serial holdings in the law library and Orbis and the Online Journals & Newspapers A to Z list for print and electronic holdings in other libraries on campus.

The just-released Treaties in Force 2009 publication by the U.S. Department of State will tell you what bilateral and mulitlateral treaties to which the United States is a party are currently in force.  This is an annual publication also available in print and on HeinOnline (subscription database available to Yale community only).

Treaty research can be complicated so there are plenty of research guides and databases to help with your research.  You will find them on our Foreign and International Research Resources page.

Our very own Zachary D. Kaufman, YLS JD Candidate '09, will be giving a book talk this Friday, April 17, 2009, at 4:00pm, in the Law Library's L3 Periodical Reading Room.  Zach, an Olin Fellow and editor-in-chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review edited After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond with Philip Clark, research fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, and co-founder of Oxford Transitional Justice Research.

In After Genocide, published by Columbia University Press, ". . . leading scholars and practitioners analyze the political, legal, and regional impact of events in post-genocide Rwanda within the broader themes of transitional justice, reconstruction, and reconciliation."

The book includes ". . . chapters from Rwandan academics and practitioners, such as Tom Ndahiro, Solomon Nsabiyera Gasana, and Jean Baptiste Kayigamba—all of whom are also survivors of the 1994 genocide—and draws on their personal experiences. After Genocide constitutes the most comprehensive survey to date of issues related to post-genocide Rwanda and transitional justice."  Read a more complete description of the book.

After Genocide is not on our shelves yet, but it will be very soon!

On a related note, to start researching the domestic law of Rwanda, begin with our Country-by-Country guide.  A nice portal to Rwandan legislation is Lexadin's World Law Guide.  Also, a simple Morris "Call Number" search for Rwanda -- KTD --will return a list of titles that have been assigned to Rwandan law.  Other human rights materials related to Rwanda are found elsewhere in the library collection.  A Morris Subject Heading" search, human rights rwanda, will return more resources cataloged primarily under human rights rather than strictly Rwandan law.

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies has released a new easy-to-use treaty index: FIT, the Flare Index to Treaties.

FIT is searchable by any one or a combination of the following:

• keywords drawn from the official, popular and alternative titles which have been used for each treaty
• additional keywords relevant to the subject matter or organisations associated with the treaty
• the date on which the treaty was concluded
• the place where the treaty was concluded

For example, a free-text search for "genocide" will redirect you to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  When you click on the Convention, you'll discover that the treaty was concluded on 9/12/1958 in New York, and is published at 78 UNTS 277 (and many other places).  There are also several links that will take you to the full-text of the convention.

For more resources related to treaty research, including a drafting history (travaux preparatoires) research guide and an annotated list of databases, see the Yale Foreign and International Resources page.

The Law Library is testing Westlaw China, a new database with primary and secondary sources on China laws:

http://www.westlawchina.com/login.php

The trial user ID and password can be found in YLS Inside Research Sites under Library Database Passwords. 

The State Deparment recently began publishing online the Treaties and Other International Acts Series (TIAS).  This website is open-access and a work-in-progress. As of today there are only treaties from the years 1996 - 1998.  The treaties are available in pdf.  UPDATE: TIAS is now available up to 2001.

You can find scanned pdfs of the TIAS print volumes on HeinOnline from 1982 - 1996.  UPDATE: TIAS is now available up to 2000.

The print volumes of TIAS are available on L1 (KZ235.32 .U55) but have only been published up to 1998.

The Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve law school has developed an exiting new War Crimes Research Portal.  The portal has four features:

1. the portal contains over a thousand links to websites related to international humanitarian law, arranged alphabetically by subject area and including a summary of the content of each site;
   
   
2. the portal contains the text of over 120 research memoranda on issues pending before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the International Criminal Court.  The memos can be searched by date published, title, or keywords. (Cites to the memos should take the following form: [Author’s name], [Title of Memo], Research Memorandum Prepared for the Office of the Prosecutor of the [Name of Tribunal], [Date].); 
   
   
3. there is a Research Guide to international humanitarian law and tribunals, prepared by the Case Law School Law Library, which includes a bibliography of relevant articles and books, as well as links to international law journals on the Web;
   
   
4. the portal contains "instant analysis" articles, written each month by the members of the American Branch of the International Association of Penal Law, on the hottest topics in international criminal law.

Frederick K. Cox International Law Center also has webcasts available of recent events:

• War Crimes Research Symposium: The International Criminal Court and the Crime of Aggression
  Speakers: M. Cherif Bassiouni, Mark Ellis, Don Ferencz, William Schabas and many more
  http://law.case.edu/lectures/webcast.asp?dt=20080926
  
  
• Klatsky Seminar in Human Rights: The Future of Human Rights
  Speaker Information: Geoffrey Robertson, Queen's Counsel, formerly of the SCSL
  http://law.case.edu/lectures/webcast.asp?dt=20081106

When searching for books on war crimes and humanitarian law in Morris, try searching by the following Subject Headings:

• war crime trials
• war (international law)
• guerillas (international law)

HeinOnline is a subscription database collection available to the Yale community.*

HeinOnline's United Nations Law Collection will allow you to access UN research materials quickly and easily using the Finding Aids available from the collection home page.  The Finding Aids include the ability to:

• Find and retrieve a UN Treaty by entering the UNTS Citation
  
• Search for a UN Treaty by treaty/registration number, country, short title, popular name and more
  
• Search by subject, as all treaties have been assigned a Kavass Subject
  
• Find and link directly to law review articles that cite a UN Treaty

Hein has also developed user guides, video tutorials, FAQ’s, and more.  Training Resources Include:

• Quick Reference Guide (PDF format): http://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/UN_QuickRefGuide.pdf
  
• Video Tutorial: http://www.screencast.com/t/JN7N3S57
  
• United Nations Law Collection Wiki Page: http://heinonline.org/wiki/index.php/HeinOnlineLibSpec:United_Nations

The United Nations Law Collection Wiki page contains links to the Quick Reference Guide, Video Tutorial, FAQs, How-To information, search examples, and more!

Hein further invites users to collaborate and join in discussions via HeinOnline’s 2.0 Community.  Friend Hein on Facebook, collaborate on Hein's Wiki, subscribe to Hein's Blog, watch Hein on YouTube, or follow Hein on Twitter! 

Visit Hein at http://www.heinonline.org/home/training/Educational_Resources.html to find out more about our virtual community. 

*In order to access HeinOnline and other Yale subscription database from off-campus, you must be connected to the Yale network via VPN.

The International Video Law Library is a fantastic place to find, listen to, and watch leading experts in the field discuss substantive international law issues.  Also within the International Video Law Library is the Human Rights Video Library.

Some of the lectures in the library include:

• Thomas Buergenthal, Judge at the International Court of Justice, speaks about reservations to treaties.

• Philippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court,  for an interview in September 2005 in which he introduced himself, and went on to give the historical background of the creation of the International Criminal Court.  President Kirsch then when on to explain how the Court functions, its structure, and finally gave a status report of the Court's activites as of 2005.

• James Crawford , Whewell Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge, considers his time at the UN International Law Commission as part of the Working Group on an International Criminal Court and the drafting of the 1994 Draft Statute for an International Criminal Court. The 1994 ILC Draft was source of the drafting process which ultimately lead to the 1998 Rome Diplomatic Conference and the creation of the International Criminal Court.

• Judge Navanethem Pillay, President of the International Criminal for Rwanda Tribunal (1999 - 2003) and later Judge of the International Criminal Court introduces herself and explains why the Rwanda Tribunal was established.  Judge Pillay speaks about the legacy which the ICTR will leave in respect to the evolution of international jursiprudence, and discusses the means by which the ICTR will finish its work. 

• Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), discusses the feminist approach to international law.

There are many more.  Enjoy!

Of course the Yale Law Library has a fantastic print and electronic international law library.  For a list of our electronic international law resources, go to our webpage of Foreign, International and Transnational Law Resources.  Our international law reference books, treatises, looseleafs, and monographs are in the compact and open shelving areas and reading room on L1 as well as the Upper East Side.  The librarians are more than happy to assist you with your international legal research!