Sources of Public International Law

Secondary sources are often the best place to start for any legal research problem and this is especially so for those that involve public international law.  Because international law looks so different from the legal systems we may be familiar with, relying on the explanations of experts is critical.  Also because the research environment itself looks so different, collecting as many citations to materials from our secondary sources as possible is the way to go.  And some of the secondary sources we should already be familiar with have international material that can be of use!

Starting with a book when you have a topic in hand can be a great place to begin your research path because it will give you the necessary background to see how things fit together and better appreciate the finer points of the information you find when drilling down on finding specific answers in sources covering more narrow issues.  Thinking about the area of law and/or the various international instruments that may be involved in a problem is a good way to generate keywords to find books that we have on the shelf, by looking in our catalog, or that are available at other libraries, which you can request via ILL.  

When you have a more specific information need in hand, using the language that you learned from a book (or any secondary source) and searching for articles is a great way to build off of your earlier success.  HeinOnline has a large collection of International & Non-U.S. Law Journals in its Law Journal Library: