International Law Documents

International law is a curious and highly elusive phenomenon. On the one hand, it seems to move from crisis to crisis, from incident to incident, from major political event to major political event. Some of the most well-known treaties tend to be concluded as settlements after bloody conflicts: think of the Westphalia treaties after the Thirty Years War, the Versailles Treaty after the First World War, or the United Nations Charter after the Second World War. By the same token, some treaties are seen as marking great human progress and therewith heralding a new phase in global politics: this might apply to the Treaty establishing the European Union, or the Statute of the International Criminal Court, or the Genocide Convention. In fact, this can also apply to instruments that involve the common agreement or desires of states but are not considered treaties: it would be difficult to overstate the impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And yet, at the same time, international law also manifests itself in the mundane and banal. Every time an airplane completes an international flight, every time a criminal is extradited, every time a taxpayer gets money back from a foreign country – they all mark international law in action. Several thousands of bilateral treaties exist protecting against double taxation; several more thousands exist protecting foreign investors and their investments; there are impressive numbers of treaties also when it comes to such topics as air services, or extradition and assistance in police matters.

International lawyers (lawyers generally, really) must learn how to work with these documents and must have some basic idea as to what these documents say. This applies to the major political treaties (the Charters, the Covenants), but also to the everyday treaties in the field of air services or extradition: chances are that the future lawyer may more often be confronted by issues concerning such everyday matters than by questions concerning the proper interpretation of, say, the Genocide Convention. Then again, a highly visible and unique instrument such as the Refugee Convention is thought to be the treaty most often applied in practice.

This volume aims to provide the reader with a taste of international law both in the exceptional and in the mundane. It contains the text of a large number of classic, political treaties, but also provides samples of treaties on more everyday matters.