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.

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.

The Argentine Constitution was adopted in 1853 after years of domestic turmoil which ended with the defeat of Juan Manuel de Rosas, an authoritarian caudillo from the Province of Buenos Aires, by Justo José de Urquiza y García. This Constitution, with the amendments that will be explained below, still remains in force.

Law publishing — that is, the reproduction and dissemination of statutes, judicial decisions, commentaries, legal forms and texts — is as old as writing and can be found in all literate societies. In the ancient world, written law was essential to political and social relations. That can be seen from the importance given to law codes in the Semitic, Greek and Roman societies. Over the centuries and in every medium from stone and clay, papyrus and parchment, to paper and the electronic media of our day — law has been a major component of literature. The very fact of publication is an essential requirement for the enactment and efficacy of laws in many societies. Publication of law was widespread before the invention of printing and was achieved by reproducing important texts in multiple manuscript copies which could then be disseminated to libraries, officials and others who needed them and could afford them. The printing of law depended not only on the invention of the press itself, but also on the acceptance of what more accessible law might mean to society. In England, for example this was a matter of considerable controversy for over a hundred years.

Thank you, Terry [Harry S. Martin III] for this kind introduction. I'm glad to be here to meet you all. I'm very fond of law librarians, perhaps because of Terry, who has given us such unstinting support for a program and for a body of literature that might otherwise be considered exotic or unnecessary. I don't think we've ever asked for anything from this Library that it has not tried its very best to give us. In our program we are aware that probably the most essential thing we can do—building for the long-term—is to strengthen the Library in our field. I have to admit, in my modest moments, that people most often come here to study with us, to join our program, not for us, but for the Library. Occasionally people let it slip.

Among Asian Nations, India has become a major political, cultural and business hub. This situation has contributed to frequent interaction of foreign governments, foreign nationals and businesspersons with India and Indians. In order to make them aware of the Indian Legal System and Literatures - so that they act within scope of the system – I present here a brief article giving an introduction to Indian legal literature and legal sources.

Two earlier resources for Indian legal materials include:

1. A Bibliography of Indian Law, edited by Charles Henry Alexandrowicz, (Oxford University Press, 1958), and

2. Indian Legal Materials: A Bibliographic Guide, by H.C. Jain, (N.M. Tripathi, Bombay, 1970).

Discussing the European Union (EU) is an excellent way of dealing with the question of the translation of legal texts. Why is this the case? The European Union, with approximately 370 million inhabitants, is unique among the world's international organizations. It is unique because it uses all the official languages of its Member States in its official publications.

One of the spectacular and liberating features of the Internet in general and the United Nations web site in particular is that if a treaty you are researching was drafted in connection with a conference relating to human rights, the environment, development, or a major topic in criminal or commercial law, entire web pages based on the treaty and its history are now in place. The process of drafting and finalizing the texts of major conventions and treaties sponsored by bodies within the United Nations system is unusually well-documented. The conference process and other drafting procedures have always made researching UN treaties rather more systematic than is the case with many inter-governmental organizations.

This article focuses on the trends of law journals published by law schools in India. The article comprises a short overview of the free access to law movement around the world, and it is an attempt to showcase the growing open access to law movement in India. The article visualizes results of the responses received over the publications of legal scholarship in journals by 23 Indian law schools. The article appends recommendations for greater visibility of AW journals published by law schools in India.

This article examines the potential effects of the developing user-centered, networked information environment on scholarly communication in law. By “user-centered, networked information environment,” I mean the emerging environment for legal research and scholarship, in which most seekers and users of legal information will have ready desktop access to a networked computer and to applications that will allow them to communicate with colleagues around the world and enable them to retrieve increasing amounts of the information they need to be productive directly via the Internet, without needing to rely on locally held print sources.

This paper aims to present the historical development of academic libraries and librarianship in Turkey. It takes its starting point from the first years of the Republic and follows the reforms, improvements and setbacks in this field.

The development of globalization processes in the world economy allows reconciling supply and demand for staff regardless of the employee's country of origin and leads to international labor migration. The experience of highly developed countries shows that a country's economy and its subsequent growth largely depend on the effective recruitment and use of skilled labor. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a drastic restriction on population mobility and, consequently, worsened the economic and social situations in countries where labor migration was a widespread phenomenon. The ensuing economic crisis has not only altered trends in labor migration but has also brought new challenges to its legal regulation. The article aims to determine the features of migration trends and policy in the COVID-19 environment, examine them in the context of new regulations adopted to protect the labor rights of migrants under the current circumstances, suggest effective measures to regulate the situation in the labor market, and address the economic crises in the countries of destination and origin. The examination of this issue involved a complex methodological framework where the general scientific dialectical method was central to the research. The conducted research provides a foundation for overcoming the social and economic crises caused by COVID-19, which contributes to its practical significance.

This article will introduce an approach to teaching legal research called Expansive Legal Research. The Expansive Legal Research perspective is based upon dissertation research on legal information behavior at a law school legal aid clinic. This approach is inspired by an educational perspective called Expansive Learning, which in turn has roots in the psychological theory called Activity Theory. The Expansive Legal Research perspective includes elements inspired by Expansive Learning and Activity Theory such as a focus on an activity-centered context of both the individual and social aspects of human behavior; the design-oriented nature of human problem-solving; the role of tacit knowledge and unwritten rules in daily activity and practice; and a cultural historical approach to learning and development, where both the user and their tools are undergoing a constant process of growth and change and transformation. An Expansive Legal Research approach, and the theory it is based upon, may provide new insights into legal research instruction, and may be a useful tool for legal research instructors.

Law librarianship, especially the librarianship in judicial institutions, is different from librarianship in any other discipline. This aspect is more appropriately explained by Prof. Igor I. Kavass, when he says that “the reason for law libraries being different from other types of libraries is that they serve a profession which is literally unable to exercise its work without the use of books.” While Librarians in other organizations may convince their users to give them some time for catering to their information requirements, a court librarian has to furnish the desired information at once because the case is being argued in the Court and desired information is needed in the course of the argument. So a law librarian has to provide the information instantly without any excuse. Because of this reason, a law librarian has to be a very alert professional and must develop his or her own tools and expertise to provide the desired information instantly.

The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the wake of the horrors of the Second World War established human rights as a legitimate focus of international attention. In the half-century since, there have arisen nearly 100 universal and regional human rights agreements governing issues as diverse as discrimination against women, state-sponsored torture, and fair trials. Yet, as we embark on the twenty-first century, accompanied by the ongoing war on terrorism, there has been surprisingly little talk of these agreements. I want to take this opportunity to consider why, despite their ubiquity, human rights treaties have been largely ignored in current debates over how to address the myriad problems in the Middle East, and to suggest how we can make international agreements work more effectively to prevent abuses of human dignity.