BLS Library Blog

Note: BLS students, faculty and administrators can access the sources below on campus, in BLS housing, and elsewhere off campus if one has implemented the BLS proxy instructions.

Cambridge Compendium of International Commercial and Investment Arbitration

• In BLS Library’s SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – CAMBRIDGE.
• Preface states: “Like an encyclopedia, the Compendium contains [67] entries for most of the foundational principles and concepts underlying arbitration.”  Each Compendium entry provides an overview of key issues.  Footnotes in an entry highlight many more sources. 
• Either search this Compendium by keyword(s) + link to search results or skim the table of contents + link to a potentially useful entry.
  • Re. the “Related content” to the right of each Compendium entry: BLS researchers will need to search SARA catalog (by a book’s title) or SARA catalog’s “Find a Source” tool (by a periodical’s title) to determine if BLS Library provides a related source.  (Contact askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu for help.)
• Publication of this online Compendium occurred in Feb. 2023.  

Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law

• In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – ELGAR.
• Comprises 12 reference volumes organized around “top level” subjects (e.g., water, energy and climate change).
• Expand the table of contents to identify pertinent chapters.  Chapter authors are “international experts.”
• Publication of this Elgar Encyclopedia occurred on Mar. 30, 2023.

Elgar Encyclopedia of Human Rights 

• In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – ELGAR.
• Includes 340+ entries on the study and practice of human rights.  Entries include bibliographies.
• Click a letter of the alphabet in the table of contents or use “Search within Book” feature (on right).
• Publication of this Elgar Encyclopedia occurred on Sept. 6, 2022.

Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law

• In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – OXFORD.
• Provide 1,700+ peer-reviewed articles on key international law topics.  Contain articles from both Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law and Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law.  Articles highlight many primary legal sources and include bibliographies.  
• Tab: Subject lists articles arranged by topic.  Also, use the search box (top right).
• Tip: Be aware that articles have different dates.  Example: article Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) states: “last updated: March 2023.”

Hundreds of additional resources to support international law paper topic research and development appear in these two publicly-accessible BLS Library guides:

Paper Topic Selection: International (focus: sources to identify new developments)

Paper Topic Development: International (focus: tools to identify articles, books, treaties, UN documents, jurisprudence and other sources)

BLS librarians want to help!  Contact us to obtain more information about library sources and services:

• Email us: askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu
• Text us: 718-734-2432

BLS students: you can register FOR FREE to attend the online International Law Weekend 2020 (Oct. 22-24, 2020).  This year’s meeting theme is: International Law in Challenging Times.  On this page, click: Full Schedule of Speakers to view the complete schedule of events.  The opening panel will discuss current challenges on Thursday at 2 pm. Both Surveillance, Privacy, and Human Rights: The Outlook for 2021 and Intellectual Property and COVID-19 in International Law will follow on Thursday in the 3:30 pm program time slot. Asylum in Crisis: Upholding Human Rights During a Pandemic will occur on Friday at 10:30 am. Participate in International Law Trivia on Friday afternoon…  On Saturday at 9 am, sip your pumpkin spice coffee while enjoying the keynote address of H.E. Judge Julia Sebutinde, International Court of Justice.  The Pathways to Careers in International Law panel also will occur on Saturday at 11:30 am. After this career program, there will be a career networking session sponsored by ILSA. Then, attend one of the “hot topics” panels.   

A BLS student, faculty member or administrator who has implemented the BLS proxy instructions now has off-campus access to 180+ treatises, handbooks and treaty commentaries in Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law (OSAIL).  (In BLS Library’s SARA catalog record for OSAIL, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION-OXFORD.) This e-collection includes recently published handbooks, such as: The Oxford Handbook of International Arbitration, The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law and The Oxford Handbook of International Cultural Heritage Law.  It contains noted treatises, such as Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law (9th ed.).  It provides treaty commentaries, ranging from The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (3^rd ed.) to The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary.  Paper-writing students: if you click Title List near the top right of the screen, you will see OSAIL’s e-books listed by category, such as: Environmental Law, Human Rights Law and Use of Force/Humanitarian Law.

Q: What do International Law Weekend 2020 and OSAIL have in common?                                                                         

A: At 9:30 am on United Nations Day (Saturday, Oct. 24), International Law Weekend 2020 will offer a United Nations 75th Anniversary Plenary Panel.  To commemorate the United Nations’ 75^th anniversary, OSAIL is providing a FREE (until Nov. 30, 2020) collection of articles and chapters about “the role of the UN in international law over the past 75 years, and its significance to the development of global human rights and international peace and security.”   

A recent ruling by a court in Australia is garnering international attention for considering the impact on climate change as a factor in its dismissal of an appeal by a coal mining company against a decision denying its application to establish an open-cut coal mine.

The decision, Gloucester Resources Limited v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7, referred specifically to the impact that increased greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) would have on climate change, noting that “the GHG emissions of the coal mine and its coal product will increase global total concentrations of GHGs at a time when what is now urgently needed, in order to meet generally agreed climate targets, is a rapid and deep decrease in GHG emissions. These dire consequences should be avoided.” Gloucester Resources Limited v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7, para. 699.

While the impact of GHG emissions on climate change was not the sole factor relied upon by the court in issuing its decision, the inclusion of GHGs’ impact is noteworthy. In an article on Bloomberg, Martijn Wilder, an environmental lawyer at Baker McKenzie, noted that this was “one of the first times a mine has been rejected on climate grounds.” James Thornhill, Coal Developers Take Note: Climate Change Killed This Coal Mine, Bloomberg (Feb. 8, 2019), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/coal-developers-take-note-climate-change-killed-this-coal-mine.

David Morris, the chief executive of the Environmental Defenders Office which had joined the case noted that while this is a “case-specific” judgment that will not be binding on future decisions, “it will weigh heavily on the minds of decision makers [who assess fossil fuel projects]”. Michael McGowan and Lisa Cox, Court rules out Hunter Valley coalmine on climate change grounds, The Guardian (Feb. 7, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/08/court-rules-out-hunter-valley-coalmine-climate-change-rocky-hill.

Judge Preston, who authored the decision, also notably rejected the “market substitution” assumption, an argument that was rejected by the 10th Circuit as irrational in WildEarth Guardians v. US Bureau of Land Management, 870 F.3d 1222 (10th Cir., 2017). The market substitution assumption is an assumption that approving the proponent’s coal leases “would not result in higher national GHG emissions than… declining to issue the leases because the same amount of coal would be sourced from elsewhere even if the leases were not issued.” Gloucester Resources Limited at para. 542. Judge Preston noted that

“[There is a] logical flaw in the market substitution assumption. If a development will cause an environmental impact that is found to be unacceptable, the environmental impact does not become acceptable because a hypothetical and uncertain alternative development might also cause the same unacceptable environmental impact.” Id. at para. 545.
 

For more on climate change litigation, see Alice Venn, Courts can play a pivotal role in combating climate change, The Conversation, (Oct. 12, 2018), https://theconversation.com/courts-can-play-a-pivotal-role-in-combating-climate-change-104727 and check out the following:

Sophie Marjanac, Lindene Patton, Extreme Weather Event Attribution Science and Climate Change Litigation: An Essential Step in the Causal Chain?, 36 J. Energy & Nat. Resources L. 265 (2018).

Marc Zemel, The Rise of Rights-Based Climate Litigation and Germany’s Susceptibility to Suit, 29 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 484 (2018).

Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée and Lavanya Rajamani, International Climate Change Law (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017).

United Nations Publications, dedicated to promoting the knowledge and work of the UN, recently launched a new iLibrary platform in partnership with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The new platform, http://www.un-ilibrary.org/, is “the first comprehensive global search, discovery, and dissemination platform for digital content created by the United Nations.” See this link from the OECD for a PDF with more information.

The platform provides “a single online destination” to access UN’s digital content such as publications, journals, reports, and other series covering a wide range of topics: international peace and security, human rights, economic and social development, climate change, international law, governance, public health, and statistics. Titles include:

• Yearbook of the United Nations
• Yearbooks of the International Law Commission
• United Nations Demographic Yearbook
• World Economic Situation and Prospects
• World Investment Report
• Statistical Report and Yearbook

In its February launch, United Nations iLibrary has about 780 titles and is expected to expand its collection to around 3,000 titles by the end of 2016. iLibrary content is available for public users to read; however, to access and download the PDFs a separate subscription is needed.

On October 18, 2013, from 9:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at Brooklyn Law School’s Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street Brooklyn, New York, the Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law and the Brooklyn Journal of International Law will host a symposium, What Law Governs International Commercial Contracts? Divergent Doctrines and the New Hague Principles. The event should be of interest to private international lawyers and the international arbitration community. The agenda and participants of the symposium are available here.

Given the continued dramatic growth of international commerce, the Symposium will address the increasingly critical question: What law governs the contracts behind the commerce? Key issues include:

• In much of the world, courts accept the choice of the parties to a contract as to what law will govern it – but this principle is not accepted everywhere. Even in nations where it is accepted, differences abound.
• Should the ability of parties to select the law governing their contract be approached differently in the increasingly prevalent world of international commercial arbitration?
• In many arbitral systems, parties may select not only the law of a sovereign state, but also “rules of law” emanating from non-state sources, such as “principles” promulgated by international organizations. Should courts show the same deference to the parties’ choice of non-state law?

The Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Contracts, prepared by the Hague Conference on Private International Law and now nearing completion, are expected to be quite influential, both in establishing the principle of party autonomy to select the law governing commercial contracts and in developing the principle and its limits. This symposium addresses the important issues described above – from the perspectives of both current law and the “best practices” represented by the draft Hague Principles.