How international law legal researchers sometimes feel:
Source: PEXELS
The good news: You can do it!
What research options are available to you? What are your time constraints? Take time to create a plan that involves the sources you plan to consult.
Do you speak the language?
Do you know the difference between international law, foreign law and comparative legal research?
This is a free and easy-to-use Firefox extension that helps you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself. Check out the tutorial via this link: http://www.zotero.org/
Do not try to reinvent the wheel. There are many useful guides out there that may help you jump start your research. There are plenty available on the internet.
This is often a challenge. If you need current events you may want to explore newspapers, current articles and blogs.
Newpaper articles are often great resources. Here is a link to a news portal that offers access to domestic and international news. JURIST (http://jurist.org) is a web-based legal news and real-time legal research service powered by a mostly-volunteer team of over 60 part-time law student reporters, editors and Web developers led by law professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
The search "war crimes" in this portal retrieved several articles.
These days a lot of international law materials are readily available for free via the internet. However, if you choose this option then you are forced to authenticate your sources and not everything is available online or via the internet. When researching complex legal issue often a combination of print and online resources provide the best outcome.
This library has a huge international law print collection and provides access to premier subscription databases. lThe library catalog is your friend http://catalog.wustl.edu/.
Examples of LC subject headings you may be interested in:
Hint: search by subject heading and the sort by most recent book that has been published.
International criminal courts -- Cases.
International law -- Yugoslavia -- Cases.
International crimes Criminal liability (International law)
Human rights and crimes against humanity.
Still not satisfied or cannot locate it in our library? Feel free to search for sources via WorldCat/FirstSearch via an interlibrary loan request.
Did you locate a title that seems interesting – but you are in a time crunch? Try searching for the same call number in our catalog. Use the electronic browse feature in the catalog to identify a book of interest to your.
Why? Your challenge as a student: Time. Why wait to have a book interlibrary loaned to you when you can find a book with a similar content in our library.
CASES:
The case law IN ORIL is divided into 5 modules:
Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts
Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law
Oxford Reports on International Human Rights Law,
Oxford Reports on International Investment Claims
Oxford Reports on International Courts of General Jurisdiction
OTHER COOL DATABASES:
ARTICLES:
Articles: Are you seeking articles on your topic? Try searching for articles on you topic by author/title/keyword search or the advance search option.
Your options:
Here is a direct link:
The UN has been involved with several tribunals established to bring justice to victims of international crimes. The Security Council established two ad hoc tribunals, the ICTY and the ICTR. The UN has also been involved in various ways with the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), and others. While transitional justice and rule of law continue to be important to the UN, it is likely that the International Criminal Court will handle most situations that arise in the future. There are many secondary sources of information that can support research on various aspects of the work of the tribunals.
Formal name: International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991.
Formal name: International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States between 1 January and 31 December 1994.
The work of the ICTY and ICTR will soon be completed, however some tasks, including archiving of the case materials, will be carried out by a new body, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. This body calls itself the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (UNMICT).
Because this is a new body, and the Tribunals are still completing their work, it is not yet clear how much of the ICTY and ICTR website functions will be carried out by the Residual Mechanism.
Khmer Rouge Tribunal documents can be located via this link: http://www.yale.edu/cgp/news.html
Source: United Nations Dag Hammerskjold's research guide on international law.
Experienced researchers will from time to time experience that not all trial documents are available online nor in all of the print sources.
For example, in the ICTR case of Alfred Musema (ICTR-96-13), the original indictment charged Musema with "genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide" and other charges. The amended indictment charged him with "genocide, or in the alternative, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide" and other charges. The charge of complicity in genocide was omitted from the original indictment.
The ICTR website only provides the amended indictment. The print source Reports of Orders, Decisions and Judgements (ICTR) likewise only includes the amended indictment (although it is not labeled "amended").
The only sources that reprint the original indictment (the indictment not including the complicity in genocide charge) are the Global War Crimes Tribunal Collection KZ1190.G56. The bottom line: for the most thorough research, be sure to compare online and print availability of e.g. ICTR and ICTY documents!
Source: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/library/research/guides/WarCrimes.cfm
The Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute of Washington University School of Law concluded a Co-Operation Agreement with the International Criminal Court in September 2009. Under the Co-Operation Agreement, the Harris Institute is responsible for collecting and uploading documents for the "National Jurisdictions" and "National Cases Involving Core International Crimes" folders in the ICC Legal Tools database.
The Harris Institute has been researching, collecting, and analyzing relevant domestic legislation and case law concerning genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for the following States:
Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Namibia, Niger, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, South Africa, Swaziland, Tonga, Tuvalu, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
For more information about the project and to access the ICC Legal Tools database, click here.
Source: Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute website.
Tove Klovning is the law school's Foreign/Comparative and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law. She oversees foreign, comparative, and international law services at the law library and teaches Legal Research Methodologies I & II. She often guest lecturers on legal research methodology strategies in seminar classes and assists researchers with legal research questions relating to foreign law, comparative law, and international law, as well as questions related to the American legal system. She has written several research guides on American, international, and foreign legal issues. Klovning has taught in the Global Legal Studies Master Program at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Portugal, and has been a speaker at both U.S. and international conferences. Before joining the law school, Klovning worked at the Albert Jenner, Jr. Law Library of the University of Illinois, assisted as a Visiting Research Scholar in the Ombudsman Office at Southern Illinois University, Illinois, was a law clerk intern for the Bergen Circuit Court in Norway, and a legal caseworker in Bergen, Norway. Klovning has resided in various countries across Asia and is multilingual. She is an associate member of the American Bar Association.
Phone: (314) 935-6443
Email: tklovni@wustl.edu
© 2013 to current date. All Rights Reserved. Excerpts and links may be shared provided that full and clear credit is given to the authors together with a link to the original guide. External links are being provided as a convenience purposes only. This guide is in part adapted from a guide that I wrote on this topic in 2013. That guide is now archived.