The recent transformation of legal information has led to more drastic consequences in law than in some other fields. As electronic resources become more prevalent and available, courts begin citing to them. The emerging digital-born information and the new network models of communication such as Law Blogs and Wikipedia have already acquired a certain status, being cited by court decisions. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court recently cited a videotape in its decision of Scott v. Harris (2007), saying “it speaks for itself,” and included it in the opinion as an attachment.

Unfortunately, like many other government entities, the courts have not taken precautions to make sure that the materials they cite remain stable and available to the public for long term access. This is so, even though “no one is supposed to ignore the law.” What happens when the materials one relies on disappear?

This paper examines the serious implications that could arise from this situation. It will also examine the challenges, new roles and possible course of action for law libraries and librarians in ensuring the availability of digital objects in the legal field far in the future.

As a glance at his bibliography shows, Dr. Sipkov, as well as a law librarian, was a publicist in the original sense of the term — a scholar of public, in particular public international, law. It is therefore fitting that our comment deals with a basic issue that arises at the intersection of international law and librarianship. We would like to evoke the problem of defining and then finding the “material sources” of customary international law. That means understanding, then locating, the concrete, usually documentary, materials that must be used to confirm the existence of a state practice. The consistent, generalized, though not necessarily universal, practice of states forms the objective element of a customary rule. This basic problem of international legal research is not new, but as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations International Law Commission, it makes sense to examine it again. Developments over the last half century should help in understanding how we try currently to solve the difficulties and will do so in the future.

Legal databases in Austria go back to two different sources. In the public sector decisions of the three major (or high) courts, the Constitutional Court, the Administrative Court and the Supreme Court, have been stored in local databases. In the private sector the major legal publisher MANZ created a limited company in 1982, RDB (Rechtsdatenbank), with the participation of representatives of the legal profession and a big bank. The legal publisher ORAC and EDP professionals joined the team. Most of the journals in RDB are available in full text starting in 1978, but the Hohenecker-Index goes back to 1947.

I propose to present a bird's eye view of the eventful life led by the famous Dutch jurist and statesman, Hugo Grotius. This I will do by discussing five of his portraits. These portraits have been made in five subsequent phases of his career. As a scholar who enjoyed a reputation that steadily expanded and that soon transcended the boundaries of the Dutch Republic, he went to the trouble of ordering famous artists, some of which were his friends, to immortalize him in copper or paint.

The first feature that catches the eye when the Baltic is compared with other regions of the world is that the Baltic Sea area clearly distinguishes itself by the unusual combination of two elements. On the one hand, it is surrounded by nine countries adhering to different political as well as economic systems. On the other hand, apart from a relatively short segment south and southeast of the island of Bornholm between Denmark and Poland, a maritime boundary has been agreed upon in all other areas, at least if one disregards the trijunction points connecting these different lines. In the overwhelming majority of cases, moreover, a single maritime boundary has been established (continental shelf as well as fishery and economic zone). Some doubt may exist with respect to the German-Danish boundary, but the only real exception to this rule is the most southern stretch of the continental shelf delimitation line between Finland and Sweden (West and South of Bogskar), where the municipal legislation of both countries concerning the outer limits of their respective fishery zones corresponds neither inter se nor with respect to the continental shelf boundary. Negotiations on this topic have been initiated between the parties during the fall of 1989. As of today, these negotiations have not yet resulted in a new bilateral boundary agreement. It should also be noted that in all cases of adjacency the territorial sea has been delimited.

The law library is an essential service in the functioning of an academic library. Unlike other disciplines where the library is just one of a number of supporting overhead services provided to enable the researcher and student to do their work, the law library is like a laboratory, thus making it an essential service to legal research.

The present annotated, bibliographic survey covers works in English on the issue of capital punishment in Russia in the years 1917–2000. Considered are primary sources of criminal law of the Russian Federation as well as periodical articles and essays on the topic. The work concludes with a chronology of the death penalty in Russia, which spans ten centuries.

For a significant part of the twentieth century, the countries and nations of Eastern Europe were considered as belonging to the “socialist family of laws”. There is no great need to study this particular phase or concept in any detail for the simple reason that in recent years it has become clear that Marx and Trotsky were wrong. It is not capitalism that will be consigned to the dust-bin of history, it is Communism that is being consigned to the trash heap in 1991.

It should now be evident that a lot of wool has been pulled over a lot of eyes on the subject of “socialist law”. For years, scholars and practitioners—believed in the existence of an efficient or at least a workable and functioning collection of legal systems in Eastern Europe. These were all assumed to be based, in some respectable fashion or other, on the precepts of Marx and Engels, applying the Hegelian dialectic to arrive at the desired legal norms of the new society and implementing legislation to achieve this goal. Everyone then understood the Communists view of law as a political instrument which would shift societies to a final workers’ paradise.

The Indian constitution contains in Part III, a Chapter on fundamental rights. The fundamental rights cover a broad spectrum, including

1. • the right to life and personal liberty;

2. • the right to equality and equal protection;

3. • freedom of conscience;

4. • the right to profess, practice and propagate religion;

5. • freedom of association and assembly,

6. • free movement within the territory of India, and

7. • freedom to practice a profession, trade or business.

The fundamental rights are not absolute because the freedoms that are recognized by Article 19 are subject to reasonable restrictions in a variety of contexts.

One of the principal difficulties involved in the search for and use of Latin American publications, whether of an official, legal, economic, or general nature, is a haphazard identification of resources. This is not to say that those in need of Latin American information are less than resourceful in their investigation, but rather, that the very character of the literature they seek can be an elusive and sporadic one.

International administrative tribunals have gained in popularity during the past several years. These tribunals have been established as the need arose to adjudicate disputes between international organizations and their staff members. Since the disputes are internal in nature, the tribunals filled the lacunae between local or national jurisdiction on the one hand, and a global international forum on the other.

This article identifies and provides a brief description of Malaysian electronic legal information and resources. It guides non-legal and legal information-seekers to find useful legal information and resources on the web. A brief description of the Malaysian legal system and its history is also highlighted to give an understanding of the context of the development of the country's legal system and its resources.

This paper endeavours to dispel the logical conclusion which one may draw from the territorial nature of intellectual property rights and aims to show that the term “international intellectual property” may refer to the underlying products of intellect which give rise to rights granted internationally and which are, themselves, rights of a different sort.

To suggest that “there is no such thing as international intellectual property” may have been particularly reasonable prior to the end of the 19th century when there was little or no international obligations to protect intellectual property. Nowadays, however, the term “international intellectual property” is, at the very least, misunderstood, if not a clear term that has worked its way into the international legal lexicon with each international intellectual property agreement entered into since the beginning of the beginning of the international period.

It is quite plain that individual intellectual property rights such as copyright, patents, registered designs, and registered and unregistered trade mark rights are not international in scope or nature. It is also quite clear that intellectual property rights are territorial in nature as they are derived from national law and are governed exclusively within jurisdictions of such law. This principle is trite and was better observed in a World Intellectual Property Organization survey:

Each country determines, for its own territory and independently from any other country, what it is to be protected as intellectual property, who should benefit from such protection, for how long and how protection should be enforced.

Despite an apparently logical conclusion which one may draw from the territorial nature of intellectual property rights, the term “international intellectual property” may infer something more than this. Rather than confining the term to basic interpretation of the words which make the term, international intellectual property may refer to the underlying products of intellect which give rise to rights granted internationally and which are, themselves, rights of a different sort. While the standards of recognition and rights granted in relation to such products of intellect may vary between nations, the source of such products remains the same and it is such property which various international agreements seek to govern. It is given through developments in international intellectual property agreements, that a definition of the term may be implied, if not derived.

In this paper, I endeavour to establish that there is such thing as international intellectual property. As such, I will first establish that there is such a thing as „intellectual property,” despite arguments against the term. I will then move on to establish that there is such thing as international intellectual property, particularly in light of the developments in international intellectual property agreements.

Shortly after the Meiji Restoration, under the influence of French law, a modern system of judicial administration was introduced in Japan. In 1871 the Ministry of Justice was created, and in 1872 several kinds of courts were established. However, in this period, the separation of powers had not yet been implemented. Therefore, it was not until 1875, the Eighth year of the era of Meiji, that Japan established a unified judicial system. In that year, for the first time, the judicial service was separated from the executive power and became independent, except that the Ministry of Justice retained responsibility for the functioning of the courts and the appointment of all court personnel, including judges. Under “Taishinin Sho-saibansho Shokusei Shōtei” (the Rules for the Organization of the Great Court of Judicature and Various Other Courts), one highest court “Taishin-in” (the Great Court of Judicature) and two types of inferior courts “Jōtō-saibansho and Fu-kensaibansho” (Higher Courts and Provincial Courts) were set up.

The title of this paper comes from the famous ‘Schuman Declaration’ of 1950, which signaled the placing of Franco-German production of coal and steel under a single High Authority. It is quite astonishing that from this humble beginning, evolved the European Union of today. The phrase takes on new relevance as the Treaty of Nice paves the way for the biggest single enlargement of the European Union. The current Treaty, completes the Intergovernmental Conference which began in February, 2000. The founding treaties, signed in Paris and Rome in 1951 and 1957 respectively, and the amending treaties, most notably the Treaty on European Union, (Maastricht), and the Treaty of Amsterdam, form the Constitution of the European Union. It is important to note that while the earlier treaties concentrated on economic integration, the later treaties have shifted towards political questions. Bibliographic references to the various treaties have become quite complicated because the Treaty of Amsterdam brought about a renumbering of the articles to both the Treaty on European Union (EU) and the Treaty establishing the European Community (EC).