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While the links shown for each subject area will yield specific information for that subject, the links below are good general-purpose starting points for research in international law.
Public International Law at the University of Western Australia is an excellent source for a variety of current information on international law issues.
The material in the U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library is well-maintained and quite comprehensive.
Students may especially want to review the International Relations Page from the University of Virginia. It tracks this page fairly closely by topic. Closer to home, Wellesley College's library maintains a list of web Resources in International Relations that may be useful.
A note about citing sources from the internet in research papers: at this time, there isn't really a definitive set of rules about the proper format for web citations. The most-cited source of information is Janice Walker's "MLA Style Citations of Electronic Sources." Another source of information on electronic cites is "Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources." Whatever your source, it is important when citing electronic sources to leave enough of a road map so that a reader could get back to your source. You will also want to have, at least in your bibliographic reference, the date on which you accessed the page. This will help readers, because web sites change so frequently.
In addition to the general research sources listed above, the Fletcher
School's Multilaterals
Project makes available many multilateral treaties. Yale Law School's
Avalon Project maintains
a wonderful collection of historic documents of international law.
The Government of Australia maintains an excellent site explaining traditional forms of international law, as well as Australian procedures for concluding treaties and other agreements. The full catalogue of information is available at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Treaties Library. Of particular interest are Chapters 3 and 10 in Trick or Treaty.
Most important international organizations have good web sites with lots of information about the ways they work, and often with links to other relevant sites. See, for example, the sites of theWTO, IMF, World Bank, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and NATO.
There are many sites devoted to the United Nations. Start with the UN
Home Page, making sure to take the virtual tour. Yale University maintains
a U.N Scholars' Workstation
which allows you to search for information by topic and organization. The
Global Policy Forum,
a relatively new organization located in New York, monitors and analyzes
UN activities.
Finally, there are many interesting sites concerning the European Union. A good starting point is the EU's official Europa site.
The Journal of Philanthropy, in North Carolina, maintains a meta-index of NGOs. Their site is an excellent way of finding all kinds of organizations dealing with all kinds of issues.
The NGO charged with implementing the Humanitarian Laws of War, such as the Geneva Conventions, is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Its web site is excellent and rather moving to explore.
One source of information on development and relief organizations, especially those from the U.K., is One World Broadcasting's Home Page.
A good starting point for finding human rights organizations is the Human Rights Home Page.
Another excellent gateway site for finding NGOs dealing with environmental issues is EnviroLink. Among the organizations that are active in formulating global environmental law and policy are:
The U.S. State Department keeps a list of current nations and of Dependencies at its home page. For a gateway to secession, liberation and nationalist movements worldwide, see the Homelands page. A new term the Fourth World, is being applied to ethnic groups not forming a nation. The Fourth World Documentation Project has an interesting site concerning these groups.
Extradition has been a significant international political issue for centuries. Recently, the application of extradition treaties has become a major domestic political issue in many countries, particularly in Latin America. In the wake of U.S. cases such as U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain, the interest in finding a multilateral solution to the question of extradition has taken on new life. For an excellent introduction to the subject, read the Background Paper for the Workshop on Extradition and International Cooperation from the Cairo Conference in 1995.
Extradition has many contemporary applications in the area of drug-related crimes, terrorism, and financial crimes. Just for fun, you may wish to view the International Fugitive Lookout, from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Most of the Fortune and FT 500 companies have excellent web sites. Some, such as Shell Oil, attempt to explain controversial corporate conduct. Others are more general, but contain useful information. See for example, Johnson & Johnson's famous Credo at its web site.
Multinational Monitor maintains an annual list of what it considers to be the worst corporations. The 1995 list consisted of Shell, BHP, Archer Daniels Midland, Chiquita, Enron, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, DuPont, and Warner-Lambert. I don't find this list particularly credible, but read it, read about the companies, and decide for yourself.
One interesting approach to the role of business in partnering with NGOs for development is Ciba-Geigy's Foundation for Cooperation with Developing Countries. There is a lot of interesting information at this site.
After many years, an international effort against corruption finally seems to be gaining some momentum. The starting point for government efforts to stem transnational corruption is the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A good descriptive article, Antibribery Provisions of the FCPA is avialable on the web. One article looking at the FCPA from the perspective of business compliance is Schmidt and Frank, FCPA Demands Due Diligence in Global Dealings.
It's too soon to say what the practical effect of these efforts will be, but there are several areas of current developments, the most significant of which proably comes from the OECD, and its recent recommendations on bribery in international business.
If you wish to know the extent of the perceived problem, try the Internet Corruption Rankings. An article by Busse, Ishakawa, Mitra, Primmer, Doe and Yavaroglu, "The Perception of Corruption: A Market Discipline Approach," an excellent exposition of the effect of the perception of corruption on foreign direct investment.
The NGO most active in campaigning against corruption is Transparency International, headquartered in Germany. Their web site contains a lot of very useful information. On a more official note, you may wish to go to the site of Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
Interesting company sites dealing specifically with corruption include the Lockheed-Martin ethics page, and the Ingersoll-Rand Corporate Code of Conduct.
One of the best general resources on war and peace is the Canadian Forces College Contemporary Conflicts page. An interesting, non-traditional approach to current issues of war and peace is that taken by the Carter Center, headed by the former U.S. President.
The advent of the internet has dramatically changed the ability of human rights activists to get their messages out to the world in a timely fashion. It may be possible to make the case that repressive governments will step up attempts to censor the internet because it is so successful at exposing human rights abuses.
There are several excellent, comprehensive web sites looking at human rights from regional and topical perspectives. Any research project should probably start with those sites. The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library is true to its name, as a library of human rights resources. Derechos is another excellent site, with particular strength in Latin American issues. The AAAS Science and Human Rights Programs also maintains an excellent gateway site, as does the Public International Law web site referred to earlier on this page.
Many sites organize campaigns and information primarily on national or regional bases. A good place to start looking at human rights issues in this way is the U.S. State Department's 1997 Human Rights Reports. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, two of the most prominent NGOs in the field, also have web sites worth investigating.
For the purpose of the course, we will look at three topical issues concerning human rights.
Human Rights and Cultural Relativism. A good starting point for this discussion is a UN background note on The Challenge of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity. An excellent discussion of the issues surrounding the Bangkok Declaration and the discussion of Asian values and human rights is Human Rights Dialogue Vol 4. This symposium, The Bangkok Declaration Three Years After: Reflections onthe State of the ASia-West Dialogue on Human Rights, contains several excellent short articles.
Women's Rights. A classic exposition of the issues surrounding women and human rights can be found at Amnesty International's article "Women's Rights are Human Rights." It's long, somewhat depressing, and absolutely worth your time.
Child Labor.
Even more depressing are the articles about slavery in contemporary Africa at theAfrican Slave Trade site.
The entire text of the Law of the Sea Convention, along with the President's Letter of Transmittal to Congress is available at theU.S. State Department's web site. The UN has a Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea, with an interesting site. Another interesting site is Seaweb.
One of the most interestng applications of the Law of the Sea involves the laying of submarine fiber optic cables around the world. These cables are the physical backbone of the telecommunications revolution, especially the Internet. The FLAG consortium has a fascinating web site about its efforts to install the world's longest fiber optic cable. ITJ also has a site with maps of the routes of undersea cables across the Pacific Ocean.
An interesting article about the commercialization of space comes from the Commerce Department: "Trends in Commercial Space."
There is excellent information about commercial satellite issues at the Intelsat home page. You may also wish to see Lloyd's Satellite Constellations. For a good sense of the possibility of traffic jams in outer space, see the Telecoms Virtual Library-Satellites, from Analysys.
International environmental law is a relatively new component of international law. The UN maintains a site called Earthwatch, containing good information about emerging environmental issues, as well as information about the progress of the Rio Summit and Agenda 21. One excellent gateway site for international environmental law is the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). They provide links to their own policy papers as well as to many other interesting sites. The Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) has a fully searchable data base of environmental treaties and other documents.
On a comparative basis, you may wish to look at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site, as well as the European Environmental Law site.
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