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Problems with Sources of Information in International Law and Relations: The Case of the World-Wide Treaty Jungle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2019

Adolf Sprudzs
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Extract

We live in a complex and interdependent world. Our planet seems to have become much smaller than it used to be only a few decades ago. We know almost instantaneously what is happening in places thousands of miles away, and we also know that most world events are interrelated and affect us all, wherever we might live or whatever nationality we might belong to. Movements of goods, people and ideas across national borders and the constant interplay of national interests of states continuously create situations which demand and command international attention and cooperation. States and intergovernmental organizations are thus required to assume the roles of principal actors on the world stage where the contemporary human drama is being played with much greater number of participants and intensity than ever before. The number of independent nations has increased dramatically during the last decades. Their mutual relations accordingly require a multitude of various formal and informal arrangements unprecedented in quantity as well as complexity. It is a fact of life that no nation today can afford to live in complete isolation from all its neighbors. The economic and political realities simply do not permit it. As a result, therefore, networks of international agreements under a variety of names (for the purposes of this paper we shall call them all treaties) have been growing like mushrooms after a good autumn rain, attempting to define, reconcile, harmonize, adjust and regulate the whole spectrum of competing national interests, aspirations and needs of the multimember family of nations. The sheer number, diversity and complexity of the world treaty picture has reached such a degree of difficulty in recent years that some scholars have described the situation as a “state of confusion” or even a “treaty jungle”. Librarians are very much in the middle of this situation, being called upon to provide bibliographic guidance to and through this “jungle”. It may therefore be useful to present here, within the prescribed limited confines of this paper, a quick look on the degree of accessibility to treaty information in the world today, to discuss briefly some of the types of treaty research tools that are and are not available, and to conclude with a number of suggestions for possible improvement.

Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law Libraries , Volume 9 , Issue 5 , October 1981 , pp. 195 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by International Association of Law Libraries. 

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References

1 Prof. Seidl-Hohenveldern and Prof. Jayme, as quoted in a book review by Hilmar Krüger, 79 Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschajt 300 (1980).

2 See “The Publication of Treaties”, by Denis Peter Myers in his Manual of Collections of Treaties and of Collections Relating to Treaties, New York: Burt Franklin, 1966 [Reprint of the original London 1922 ed.] pp. 579–604.

3 Sir Fitzmaurice, Gerald, “The Development of International Law”, 138 Recueil des Cours 211-260, at 231 (1973, I).

4 Some of these state practices are described in the author's Treaty Sources in Legal and Political Research: Tools, Techniques and Problems—The Conventional and the New, Tuscon, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1971 [2nd printing in 1973] pp. 63.

5 See, for example, Rohn, Peter H., “Canada in the United Nations Treaty Series: A Global Perspective”, 4 The Canadian Yearbook of International Law 102-130 (1966), as well as his “Turkish Treaties in Global Perspective”, 6 Turkish Yearbook of International Law 119-160 (1965).

6 “La publication des engagements internationaux de la France”, 8 Annuaire Francois de Droit International 888-904 (1962).

7 U.N. Doc. A/C.5/1566, 29 November 1973.

8 U.N. Doc. A/32/214, 14 September 1977.

9 U.N. Doc. A/33/258, 2 October 1978, p. 4.

10 See U.N. Docs. A/34/455, 9 October 1979; A/C.5/34/40, 17 November 1979 with Corr. 1 and 2; A/35/7/Add.1, 16 June 1980, etc.

11 According to Gen. Ass. Res. 35/436 of 15 December 1980, the problem has been included in the provisional agenda of the U.N. General Assembly for its thirty-sixth session.

12 See, for example, Clive Parry's article “Where to Look for Your Treaties” in 8 International Journal of Law Libraries 8-18 (1980) and the references therein.

13 Particularly difficult is the problem of obtaining up-to-date status information on multilateral treaties. See this reporter's comment “Status of Multilateral Treaties —Researcher's Mystery, Mess or Muddle?”, 66 American Journal of International Law 365-376 (1972).

14 Rohn, Peter H., “The United Nations Treaty Series Project”, 12 International Studies Quarterly 174-195 (1968).

15 See, for example, two articles dealing with the USA and the USSR: “Basic U.S. Sources for Current Research in International Law: An Elementary Vade-Mecum”, by Sprudzs, Adolf, 5 International Journal of Law Libraries 347-358 (1977), and “Primary Sources on the Soviet Practice of International Law: A Breviary”, by George Ginsburgs, 6 International Journal of Law Libraries 1-14 (1978).