Studies on international human rights had amorphous beginnings before 1945, which gradually evolved into an intricate but “untrodden area of systematic research.” This is largely attributed to the adoption of the United Nations Charter which sets forth the international protection of human rights as a basic purpose. The proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in December 10, 1948, provided the impetus for the development of new rules of international law defining in specific terms, individual rights and freedoms. The result is not only a substantial and rapidly developing body of law, both substantive and procedural, that has called for a systematic scholarly analysis but a bibliographic output on the subject which has reached alarming proportions to what is now being referred to as “the human rights documentation explosion.”

The desirability of applying uniform standards to international documentation is well recognized. The need to “identify and consider adoption of established, relevant standards aimed at improving retrieval” was expressed by Helen Seymour at the 1972 International Symposium on the Documentation of the United Nations and Other Intergovernmental Organizations. Among the final recommendations emanating from that meeting were Number 31, which calls for application of the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) system, and Number 33, which calls for adoption of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). In line with this thinking, I would like to suggest the development and adoption of a standard for the bibliographic citation of international documents.

With the completion of the classification schedule for the entire body of German law the development of law classification at the Library of Congress (LC) has entered a new stage. It seems appropriate to provide a few notes on principles and policies governing law classification and a discussion of the techniques applied for the first time to derive a synchronized scheme from a model scheme.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), founded in 1959, is one of the principal organs of the Organization of American States. The Commission is empowered to receive complaints from individuals, organizations and groups alleging violations of human rights in any of the member states of the OAS, and to make findings of fact and recommendations designed to effect the vindication of those rights.

The primary task of this Section of the IJLL is to alert the readers either to comparative legislative developments in a particular subject area or to highlight a single major piece of legislation which is likely to have an impact or influence on other than a national forum. It will also attempt to survey international acts and documents affecting the relations within the community of nations as well as the legislative programs and policy of the states involved.

Materials intended for publication in this Section should be sent to the Section Editor, Dr. Ivan Sipkov, European Law Division, Law Library, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 (U.S.A.). They will be published, upon acceptance, under the contributor's name.

We live in a complex and interdependent world. Our planet seems to have become much smaller than it used to be only a few decades ago. We know almost instantaneously what is happening in places thousands of miles away, and we also know that most world events are interrelated and affect us all, wherever we might live or whatever nationality we might belong to. Movements of goods, people and ideas across national borders and the constant interplay of national interests of states continuously create situations which demand and command international attention and cooperation. States and intergovernmental organizations are thus required to assume the roles of principal actors on the world stage where the contemporary human drama is being played with much greater number of participants and intensity than ever before. The number of independent nations has increased dramatically during the last decades. Their mutual relations accordingly require a multitude of various formal and informal arrangements unprecedented in quantity as well as complexity. It is a fact of life that no nation today can afford to live in complete isolation from all its neighbors. The economic and political realities simply do not permit it. As a result, therefore, networks of international agreements under a variety of names (for the purposes of this paper we shall call them all treaties) have been growing like mushrooms after a good autumn rain, attempting to define, reconcile, harmonize, adjust and regulate the whole spectrum of competing national interests, aspirations and needs of the multimember family of nations. The sheer number, diversity and complexity of the world treaty picture has reached such a degree of difficulty in recent years that some scholars have described the situation as a “state of confusion” or even a “treaty jungle”. Librarians are very much in the middle of this situation, being called upon to provide bibliographic guidance to and through this “jungle”. It may therefore be useful to present here, within the prescribed limited confines of this paper, a quick look on the degree of accessibility to treaty information in the world today, to discuss briefly some of the types of treaty research tools that are and are not available, and to conclude with a number of suggestions for possible improvement.

Since all users of law libraries do so in a search for authority, the basic categories of materials are found in all law libraries. The authority may be binding or persuasive. The nature of our legal system is reflected by South African legal publications. Primary and secondary sources of the law constitute the two main groups of South African legal publications.

This short bibliography compiled by the library staff of the Honourable Society of The Middle Temple, London, under the supervision of Ms. Ella McNeill, Librarian and Keeper of the Records, is intended to draw attention to some of the recent provisions for lawyers wishing to practise in member states of the European Communities.