Treaty Research Guide: Treaty Commentary & Drafting History

TIP: Many treaty commentaries published by Oxford University Press are available in BLS subscription database: Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law.  BLS students, faculty and administrators: in the catalog record for this source, click ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - OXFORD > Subject: Law of Treaties to view a list (w/ links) of available treaty commentaries in series: Oxford Commentaries on International Law.  Off-campus access requires use of the BLS proxy server.

Below are selected treaty handbooks and commentaries.  Click on a title to obtain further information.

Article 32 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that one can consult “supplementary means of interpretation,” including “the preparatory work of the treaty” when the ordinary meaning of a treaty term is “ambiguous” or leads to an “unreasonable” result.   Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties art. 32, May 23, 1969, 1155 U.N.T.S. 331. The Medellin Court characterized treaty negotiating and drafting history and the "postratification understanding of signatory nations" as “aids" to treaty interpretation. Medellin v. Texas, 128 S.Ct. 1346, 1357 (2008), quoting Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U.S. 217, 226 (1996). Thus, the drafting history of a treaty, which people sometimes refer to by the French term “travaux préparatoires,” can be an important source. 

To find 1) treaty drafting history and 2) legal articles about treaties, consult:

BLS Library's SARA catalog

WorldCat (= "catalog of catalogs")

Free, searchable Social Science Research Network might yield pre-prints of legal articles & book chapters

Free Digital Commons Network, searchable International Law Commons > faceted search for legal articles classified by keyword: Treaties

Subscription Westlaw: Legal Resource Index (LRI)

When searching the sources above, combine words from the title of the treaty with the words:

history or travaux préparatoires or commentary

The United Nations provides a searchable database of official records from selected UN-sponsored treaty conferences in: Codification Division Publications: Diplomatic Conferences.  Jonathan Pratter links to many websites that provide treaty drafting history in: UPDATE: À la Recherche des Travaux Préparatoires: An Approach to Researching the Drafting History of International Agreements @ GlobaLex. 

Online: International Committee of the Red Cross, Treaties, States parties, and Commentaries