International Law Research Guide: Analysis of International Law

If you can find a few good books analysing your topic, it can make your research much easier. Hastings has a very good collection of books on most aspects of international law. For an even wider selection of available books, search the sources below to see if other libraries have books you can borrow through inter-library loan.

To find books at Hastings use the Hastings Catalog which allows you to do a quick one-box search to find books at Hastings. 

• The advanced search feature allows more complex title, author and subject searching.
• Search WorldCat to locate and borrow books from other libraries.

Here is a sample search which locates a broad selection of the books in the Hastings library covering international law.  The following subject searches may be useful, and you can create your own advanced searches by combining more than one search term in more than one search field.

• Civil Procedure -- International Law
• Customary Law -- International
• International Court of Justice -- Rules and Practice
• International Criminal Law
• Privileges and Immunities -- International Law

Books at Hastings are organized by call number.  Our books are currently being moved from the 6th floor to the 4th & 5th floors during our renovation.  Most of the International Law books are currently on the 5th floor in the KZ call number range.  

If you find a book that looks interesting and you are not on campus, locate the book in our library catalog, then click on the book title, and then scroll to the bottom of the screen to virtually browse the titles nearby on the shelf. Of course, if you are on campus, browsing the shelves is a great way to find relevant books.

For a wider selection of available books, search to see if other libraries have books you can borrow through Inter-Library Loan (ILL). If the book you want is not in the Hastings Library, or you would like to locate other books on your topic, use WorldCat, a database containing information about books from most of the libraries in the English-speaking world. Once you find a book, select "Request Item Through Interlibrary Loan" to borrow the book.

• The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (Simma)
• Customary International Law: A New Theory with Practical Applications (Lepard)
• The Development of International Law by the International Court (Lauterpacht)
• Fairness in International Law and Institutions (Thomas M. Franck, 1995)
• International Court of Justice: Digest of Judgments and Advisory Opinions, Canon and Case Law 1946-2012 (Dahlhoff)
• International Law: Being the Collected Papers of Hersch Lauterpacht
• International Encyclopedia for Labour Law and Industrial Relations (Blanpain)
• International Law: Norms, Actors, Process: A Problem-Oriented Approach. (Dunoff, Ratner & Wippman, 2010) [Introductory international law casebook covering the basic principles and concepts.]
• International Labor and Employment Laws - (Available online with Hastings subscription BNA access]
• The Law and Practice of the International Court (Rosenne)
• The Littler Mendelson Guide to International Employment and Labor Law - Vol. III (2012)
• Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
• Oppenheim's International Law
• Parry & Grant Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law 
• The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations (Thomas M. Franck, 1990)
• Recognition in International Law (Lauterpacht)
• Sources of International Law (Thirlway)
• The Statute of the International Court of Justice: A Commentary (Zimmermann)

Find articles by searching the various databases listed below.

Search HeinOnline for articles.  (HeinOnline also has many of the classic international law titles):

• Hein advanced search features. 
  • alien tort statute searches for those three (3) words in the document.
  • “alien tort statute” - Searches for that phrase.
  • "alien tort accomplice liability"~10 searches for those terms within 10 words of each other.
  • You can limit your search to fields such as title to get better search results
• You can limit you search to the Law Journal Library to search only journals
• The HeinOnline History of International Law Collection - This full-text database contains more than 500 titles and 550,000 pages dating back to 1690 on subjects such as: War & Peace, Nuremberg Trials, Law of the Sea, International Arbitration, Hague Conferences and Conventions. Classic works by authors such as Philip C. Jessup, Hugo Grotius, and Hersch Lauterpacht are included, as well as series such as Studies in Transnational Legal Policy and Judicial Settlement of International Disputes.
• The Hein Foreign & International Law Resources Database includes judicial deciosn, international yearbooks, and U.S. internationasl law digests.

Search the library catalog to find journals available in the library in print.  (Search tip – search for the journal title NOT the article title to find journals in print.)

Search the library catalog using the "Articles" option in the dropdown menu to locate selected journal articles available through the library by subscription.

If an article you have found is not in a law-related journal, and not in one of the online resources at Hastings, you may want to search the online databases collection at the San Francisco Public Library. You can check to see if the journal issue you want is accessible from one of the databases provided by the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), by searching the San Francisco Public Library Catalog. Or you can search through the various SFPL journal databases. Any resident of California may apply for a SFPL Library card to get online full-text access.

The Hastings Law Library subscribes to a number of online resources that may be useful in your research. Most of our online resources are listed here. You can access all of them on campus. Most of them also allow remote access. To use the database off-campus, either enter your Hastings email username and password or enter your name (as indicated on your Hastings ID) and your ID barcode number.

Journal articles can be one of the best places to find current research on your topic.  Find law reviews and other scholarly journal articles on HeinOnline, Proquest, Westlaw, Lexis and Legal Scholarship Network.

San Francisco Public Library Non-Law Journals

• If an article you have found is not in a law-related journal, and not in one of the online resources at Hastings, you may want to search the online databases collection at the San Francisco Public Library. You can check to see if the journal issue you want is accessible from one of the databases provided by the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), by searching the San Francisco Public Library Catalog . Or you can search through the various SFPL journal databases. Any resident of California may apply for a SFPL Library card to get online full-text access.

• Harold H. Koh, Transnational Legal Process, 75 Neb. L. Rev. 181 (1996)
• Harold H. Koh, Bringing International Law Home, 35 Hous. L. Rev. 623 (1998)
• The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements (Chayes, 1995).
• Customary International. Law in the 21st Century: Old. Challenges and New Debates. Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker.   21 EJIL 173-204 (2010),  [This article surveys the new non-traditional scholarship which has emerged in international law to challenge the two long-established sources of customary norms, state practice and opinio juris.]