For many years it was said that the weakness of international law was the lack of a system for the enforcement of legal obligations. Commentators pointed to the paucity of cases in the International Court and the unwillingness of States to undertake binding obligations to settle their disputes. This position has now changed beyond recognition. The number of international tribunals has increased and many of them, such as ICSID and the International Court of Justice, are busier than at any time in their history. Increasingly, the classical procedures of diplomatic protection are circumvented as...

Of all legal subjects, international law is at once the most richly varied and arguably the least understood, even by lawyers. For the past two decades it has been the focus of intense analysis by legal philosophers, international relations specialists, linguists, professional lawyers, historians, economists, and political scientists, as well as those who study, teach, and practice the discipline. Yet, the realities of international trade and communication mean that regulations in one State often directly affect matters within others. In the established tradition of the Clarendon Law Series,...

With the fall of communism and the appearance of a new world order, it is hoped that the United Nations will become the principle organisation for the regulation of relations between states as well as for the settlement of conflict. The recent crises over Iraq and the continued bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia have ensured a higher profile for the United Nations but have at the same time placed great pressure on that organisation to resolve conflict and organise relations between states in a manner that is acceptable to the international community.
The essays collected in this volume are...

One of the problems in global water management is the sharing of watercourses by neighbouring countries, a situation that continues to lead to many long-lasting conflicts. The authors of this book make a valuable contribution to ongoing attempts to find sustainable solutions to this problem and to the debate on global water scarcity in general. They examine the law and practice relating to co-operation between Finland, Sweden and Norway with respect to international watercourses, and provide an analysis of numerous bilateral and multilateral instruments, which demonstrate that even between...

This multi-author text offers a critical review of the work of the International Court of Justice, and its relations with the political organs of the United Nations, during the past fifty years. Its purpose is to draw together the reflections of the most eminent international judges, practitioners and academics in the field of public international law, on the way that the Court has handled the matters put before it. No other text has such a distinguished team of specialist contributors, or the comprehensive coverage of this volume.

Transition to Journals
From Volume 81, the British Year Book of International Law will be available as online only, print only, or combined print and online subscriptions from Oxford Journals. The British Year Book archive is available immediately from January 2011. Customers wishing to take out a subscription can do so by clicking through to the yearbook's journal page: http: //bybil.oxfordjournals.org
British Year Book will benefit from a number of additional features made possible by online publication:
Publish ahead of print - Articles will appear online throughout the...