The consolidation of European integration in the most important institutional sectors and, in particular, the abolition of obstacles impeding the free circulation of persons, goods, services and capital, has made it imperative to attain a higher level of cooperation at a pan-European level in the areas of justice and internal affairs. The elimination of the frontiers has in fact drawn increasing attention to a rather worrying paradox: the retention of juridical and regulatory barriers has allowed organised crime to exploit the incongruities which derive from the existence of the fifteen different juridical systems of Member States of the European Union.

The United Nations Treaty Collection on the Internet (UNTC) now contains, in addition to the major documents, the United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) and the Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, the texts of treaties recently deposited with the Secretary-General in the authentic languages, the titles of all treaties deposited with Secretary-General in the six official languages, depositary notifications issued by the Secretary-General in his capacity as depositary of multilateral treaties, documentation compiled in connection with three special treaty events held in 2000 and 2001 by the United Nations, the Summary of Practice of the Secretary-General as Depositary of Multilateral Treaties, the Treaty Handbook, information on treaty related technical assistance provided by the Treaty Section of the United Nations and photographs taken at treaty ceremonies in chronological order. Many of these documents were added to the UNTC over the last two years.

Foreign law, whether a subject of study in itself within the domain of comparative law, or invoked under a rule of conflict of laws to resolve a crossborder issue, is an essential library resource. In jurisdictions where foreign law must be pleaded and proved as a fact, it is up to the parties to demonstrate what that law is, in default of which the Anglo-American court will generally presume it to be the same as municipal law. In other, generally civil-law, jurisdictions it may be up the court to appoint an expert; foreign law may be treated either as law or as fact, depending upon the jurisdiction. Because family law, succession and donations are, in civil-law countries, largely ruled by personal law and because personal law may be determined by reference to facts of nationality, domicile, religion and ethnic identity, considerable academic sophistication is demanded of foreign and comparative law librarians. The escalating costs of legal materials and the difficulty of cataloguing and maintaining collections of rarely-used materials in hard languages pose additional obstacles. In the United States particularly, acquisition of foreign materials has perceptibly declined since the early 1980s. Only a handful of law libraries in the world possesses the financial, logistical, linguistic and technical wherewithal to aspire to collecting materials from all or most countries; for those, managing acquisition and selection is the main challenge. Collecting official gazettes, session laws and case reporters from many jurisdictions makes enormous demands upon space and record-keeping; microform collection is not in many cases an alternative. Where it is, it creates its own special demands.

Animal rights and animal welfare issues have reached beyond national boundaries and are now the focus of a variety of international concerns. For example, the current controversy surrounding the sale of bear parts from animals in North America to Asian nations for use in traditional medicines involves the laws of the United States and Canada, the market for bear parts in Asia, and the regulations of trade in endangered species on an international level. Other international animal rights issues include the environmental threat to wildlife in the Antarctica, the importation to the U.S. of coats made from dog and cat pelts, and the impact of animal husbandry on the problem of world hunger.

On July 17, 1998, the world community voted on the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC,) which, if ratified by 60 countries, would establish for the first time in history, a permanent international criminal tribunal. The outcome was an overwhelmingly favorable vote, with 120 countries voting in favor, 21 abstentions, and 7 countries, including the United States, against. The idea of an international criminal court appeared to be in the making.

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.

One distinctive feature of comparative law is the ongoing inquiry into the social usefulness of the discipline and the almost constant redefinition of the very object of its (scientific) research. Since the Paris Congress of 1900, comparative law seems to have inspired a vague sense of guilt in those who study it. No other legal discipline exhibits such a strong desire to justify its existence, with the possible exception of Roman Law.

Fifty years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Europe lay in ruins. What could be done to put an end to its belligerent past? Robert Schuman, then French Foreign Minister, envisioned that the European nations pool their resources together and unite their sovereign states, creating a unique form of political and economic union to be governed by supranational institutions. In the words of Jean Monnet: “Nothing can be achieved without institutions.” These ideas were the origins of the European Union.

I admit that I am an addict, a compulsive user of libraries and especially law libraries. As a comparative lawyer I need to investigate foreign law, which for me is the law of jurisdictions outside the United States. Since I believe the social and cultural context in which law operates is important to its understanding, I must leave the relative comfort of United States libraries and venture abroad to learn about the features of legal systems not adequately described in books. Beyond common law countries, as the IALL 20th Annual Course illustrates, the language of law is something other than English: yet another hill to climb to understand foreign law. For most of you, United States law is foreign law, which is the other side of the same issue. In addition, public international law lawyers could benefit from the comparative approach. This is particularly true for those from the Anglo-American world who rely almost exclusively on English language materials in their research. This narrow perspective undercuts the fundamental premise of universality behind a truly international legal system.

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.