Next time you are working on a project that involves international legal research, consider using our Oxford Public International Law online resources. Our library now subscribes to the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law, and Oxford Reports on International Law.
Do you need to quickly familiarize yourself with a public international law concept? The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL) is a great way to obtain a surface-level overview of a concept. For example, say you want to get a sense of how the term “war crimes” is used in international law. You can consult the MPEPIL entry on war crimes as a starting point to get up to speed. Each encyclopedia entry includes a bibliography and list of relevant documents. If you see a “Find it @ NU” link next to a source, click on the link to easily connect to our library catalog to see your options for accessing the content.
Do you need commentary or in-depth analysis on a topic? Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law is a terrific go-to resource. Oxford Scholarly Authorities contains electronic versions of reputable books and treatises as well as various Oxford Handbooks. A complete list of all of the titles organized by subject is available here. For example, continuing with the same hypo mentioned above, if you now need to read an analysis of Article 8 (War Crimes) of the Rome Statute, you can access an e-book of Schabas’s The International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute (2d ed.) using this resource. Are you searching for case law from international courts and tribunals? Oxford Reports on International Law (ORIL) provides access to more than 5,500 case reports from international courts, domestic courts, and ad hoc tribunals. Most official websites of international courts and tribunals lack useful search functions, but this resource is text searchable and also allows you to browse case reports by subject. Each ORIL case report contains the full-text decision, a summary of the facts and holdings, analytical commentary, and a list of cases and instruments cited.
The Oxford Law Citator is a research tool available on each of these databases to help users easily find related items. If desired, you can conduct a search across all three of these databases simultaneously by searching across “Oxford Public International Law” using the search bar near the top of the screen.
You can access these databases and all of our other law databases using the Pritzker Legal Research Center’s A-Z Database List.