This conference of law librarians is convened around the theme of “New Rights — New Laws.” I want to argue that, with regard to information, while there are new laws aplenty, there are in fact no new rights. Worse, we are presently witnessing a steady erosion of even the existing public rights of access to and use of information content, whether of a legal nature or not. In fact, there is mounting evidence that the idea of the public domain itself is under serious attack both as a concept and as a collection of practices. The global privatization of cultural and intellectual content in ways unimaginable only a few decades ago is actively threatening the established structures of scholarly communication, to the increasing disadvantage of the less-developed South. Intellectual property (IP) rights are being extended into new areas, as the patent system, for example, expands into biotechnology, agriculture and medicine, while copyright, patent and trade secret protection is claimed even for computer software, mathematical algorithms, and business methods. IP protection is under discussion for indigenous knowledge, and not necessarily for altruistic reasons. And as the useful shelf life of such content shortens, the protection afforded to it lengthens disproportionately in a disturbing pattern that nearly always favors rights holders and their claims above even the most rudimentary forms of public good.

This annotated bibliography is compiled as a collection development guide for academic librarians and specialists in international law. The topic of International Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict concerns the treatment of combatants and noncombatants in wartime, while the topic of International Human Rights Law has traditionally been concerned with the treatment of individuals by states in peacetime. During the period from the end of the twentieth century to the present, the boundaries between international humanitarian law and human rights law have become increasingly blurred. Therefore, this article concentrates on core sources in both branches of international law in these key areas of overlap: conflicts between states; internal conflicts; insurgencies.

Since my retirement from the High Court of Australia in April 1995, I have pursued various activities. As Chairman of the National Library 1995-1998, National Fellow at the Australian National University and Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, I have been concerned with some current issues concerning libraries, including funding and copyright reform. My main purpose on this occasion is to speak about my experiences as a judicial rover in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Hong Kong, jurisdictions in which I have been sitting as a Judge and as a lecturer at the Chinese National Judges College in Beijing.

Ordinary citizens, litigants, students of law and lawyers in a civil society have a right to know about the prevailing law of that country. The traditional way of disseminating legal information – on paper – has given way to the electronic format in most of the developed countries. Gradually, this change is also beginning in the developing countries. In India, no one has a copyright to the text of judgments delivered by the courts; however, in the headnotes of judgments, copyright issues are involved. The bigger Internet players have started fee-based legal websites where one can become a member and/or registered user by paying periodical subscriptions. These can run into thousand of rupees every year. Only after paying the access fees can the visitor gain access to the complete headnote or the plain text of the judgment.

I thank the International Association of Law Libraries for your warm hospitality. I am glad to have had the chance to meet with you and learn about your work, and I wish you well as you meet the challenges of the technological era where law books are giving way to internet links.

After hearing the presentations about Islamic law by Professor Vogel and recent scholarship in the field by Peri Bearman, I hope you are convinced that the Law of the Islamic World is a subject of great breadth and complexity. What I would like to do now is describe how the Harvard Law School Library attempts to support teaching and research in this field. My talk will deal with the scope of collection development, acquisition strategies, processing standards, reference demands, and user education. I will also touch briefly on problematic areas and our hopes for future developments. Among the materials distributed after lunch, there is an eight-page handout, which, I hope, will highlight key points as my talk proceeds. At the end, there may still be adequate time for a few questions and discussion before we return to the Caspersen Room for the reception.

The presentation will provide an overview of the copyright issues related with the implementation of Open Access policies. It will focus on the need to obtain permission to reproduce and disseminate a copy of any published paper taking into account any copyright transfer signed by authors. This permission is needed to implement Green Open Access policies through repositories. Moreover it will explore the use of open content licenses in repositories and journals to move to the Gold Open Access model that offers not only free access to full text but full reuse of contributions.

Despite nearly 100 years of international organization and practice, international refugee law is confronted today with the critical challenges of globalization, securitization and an increasingly mobile world. Large-scale movements have exposed serious cracks in the European project; the EU's stated policy goal seems simply to keep refugees away. Elsewhere, numerous refugee situations are “protracted,” while persistent underdevelopment continues to drive the movement of people between States, in a context in which States appear unable to manage “irregular” migration. If a generous asylum policy is in practice, contingent on well-controlled external borders, can the basic rules of protection survive? Or are asylum and the principle of non-return to persecution (non-refoulement) at risk in a new international legal order? These are the issues addressed below.

The World Trade Organization was established in 1995 and brought together countries from around the world for the purpose of fairly regulating the trade of goods, services, and intellectual property between its member states. While treaties and other trade agreements have existed between countries for hundreds of years, the WTO's most significant innovation is its dispute settlement process through the Dispute Settlement Body. Countries agree to be bound to the decisions of the DSB upon their admittance into the WTO. The DSB is a two-tiered adjudicative system consisting of the lower panels and the higher Appellate Body.

The United States, under both the Obama and Trump administrations, has blocked the appointment of AB judges. This tactic has limited the number of active judges to three. The AB normally has seven members. The United States has listed a number of reasons for their boycott of the system, among them is that the AB is functioning as if its reports are to be binding precedent on the lower panel and to future DSB cases, in a manner similar to stare decisis. This issue has been observed over the years and there is conflict between interpretations of precedent under Article 3:2 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding and Article IX:2 of the WTO Agreement. Caselaw of the DSB from over the years has also raised interesting questions and the appearance of the use of precedent.

This article will be examining the historical fundamentals and use of precedent and the doctrine of stare decisis. It will then turn into an examination of the institutional and regulatory framework of the WTO, particularly Article 3:2 of the DSU and Article IX:2 of the WTO Agreement, and whether it allows or leaves room for a system of binding precedent. Finally, jurisprudence of the DSB will be surveyed for evidence of this system. Reports that will be examined are Japan-Alcoholic Beverages, India-Patents, India-Autos, and Australia-Plain Packaging Tobacco.

Both theoretically and constitutionally, South Africa is a secular state with many religious and non-religious groupings co-existing with each other. The reality is that there is widespread observance of both religious and customary law — despite a lack of or limited recognition thereof under the apartheid government. The non-recognition of other forms of law in South Africa has had negative consequences and the remedial efforts of the present government is visible both in the area of customary law and also Muslim Personal Law, hereinafter referred to as MPL. This paper will confine itself to discussing the law reform efforts in respect of the recognition of Muslim marriages.

The desirability of applying uniform standards to international documentation is well recognized. The need to “identify and consider adoption of established, relevant standards aimed at improving retrieval” was expressed by Helen Seymour at the 1972 International Symposium on the Documentation of the United Nations and Other Intergovernmental Organizations. Among the final recommendations emanating from that meeting were Number 31, which calls for application of the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) system, and Number 33, which calls for adoption of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). In line with this thinking, I would like to suggest the development and adoption of a standard for the bibliographic citation of international documents.

As the practice of law crosses national (and linguistic) borders with increasing frequency, the need for tools that facilitate the transnational practice of law becomes more acute. Bilingual legal dictionaries (BLDs) are one critical such tool, as they offer access to legal systems as well as the languages of these systems. Unfortunately, librarians have offered scant criticism of BLDs, many of which are not particularly useful. This article summarizes critical problems with BLDs and offers an approach to resolving these problems by focusing upon the quality of the entries, or definitions, that BLDs provide.

The writing of a National Report in preparation for the World Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law involves a paradox. Contrary to what might legitimately be expected, a National Reporter is not asked to engage in any comparative analysis whatsoever. What, then, is the point of a National Report? The answer lies in what an elementary exegetical analysis would suggest: the National Reporter must present the national law on a given topic (or, more accurately, his perception of the national law, for we all know that there is no such thing as the national law). Traditionally, the boundaries of the reporting enterprise have remained confined within these parameters. It is thus left to a General Reporter appointed by the International Academy itself to make sense of the various National Reports on a given topic by bringing them together with a view to eliciting differences and similarities between the legal systems under consideration.

Law may be considered as an intellectual construction and thus an object of theoretical study or as a social science and thus to be studied in its social setting or it may be considered as a technique. Whatever view may be taken, it is suggested that the raison d'être of the law is to bring about the greatest measure of peace and justice. It is this which gives it its greatest importance and its dignity. Whatever view may be taken however, and for whatever purpose the law may be either studied or applied, it is undeniable that its study and application will become more effective by an increase of information about it.