Database News

- HARVARD RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL LAW NEW!

HEINONLINE Adds to its International Law Collection

HeinOnline has added the Harvard Research in International Law ("HRIL") to its international law menu. Originally conceived by the Faculty of Harvard Law School in 1927 and 1928 as an attempt at codification of international law, it became a national codification project drawing on the expertise of several United States scholars and jurists. HRIL is an obvious inspiration for and precursor to the work of the United Nation's International Law Commission ("ILC"). Indeed Professor Manley O. Hudson, who is credited with the establishment of the HRIL, became the first Chairman of the ILC.

The initial phase of the HRIL covered nationality, state responsibility and territorial waters. The project prepared draft conventions on these topics for the League of Nations Codification Conference ("LNCC"). Each draft came with detailed "Comments" and documentary appendices. The LNCC yielded four agreements on nationality . The other drafts did not fare that well. Phase one was originally published as a special supplement to the American Journal of International Law, specifically, 23 A.J.I.L. Spec. Supp.(1929). The HRIL went through three additional phases. The second phase addressed diplomatic privileges and immunities, consuls and competence of courts in relation to foreign States and piracy. That was published as 26 A.J.I.L. Supp. (1932). The third phase covered extradition, criminal jurisdiction and treaties. It was published as 29 A.J.I.L. Supp.(1935).The fourth and final phase dealt with judicial assistance, neutrality and rights and duties of states in case of aggression. That was published as 33 A.J.I.L. Supp.(1939).

Each of these phases, like the first, yielded a draft convention on the topic together with commentary and documentary appendices. In all thirteen topics were covered. They have been used by the ILC in its work on codification and progressive development of international Law. Scholars still refer to the Harvard Research.

HRIL on HeinOnline includes access to the recent effort of modern scholars to place HRIL in modern context in the form of Harvard Research in International Law : Contemporary Analysis and Appraisal. The editors of the latter tome enlisted the support of international law scholars world wide to evaluate the continuing impact of the HRIL.

In addition, Heinonline provides links to the bibliography of the contributors to the Contemporary Analysis and Appraisal as well as all law journal articles relating to HRIL. This HRIL database on Heinonline is easy to use and a great facility for international law scholars researching the 13 topics covered therein.

- JUTASTAT

"Around Southern and East Africa in 80 Clicks!"

The Library has acquired JUTASTAT, an electronic resource that provides access to primary and secondary materials of 4 major jurisdictions in Southern and East Africa. The countries are South Africa, Tanzania, Namibia and Zimbabwe. JUTASTAT is a product of Juta, the oldest legal publisher in South Africa. The databases are electronic versions of Juta's existing print sources. They combine the unique features of these print sources with the facility of searching on an electronic medium. Each law reporter is supplemented by an index, a digest of cases reported, a treatment of cases and statutes judicially considered as well as words and phrases judicially considered. Furthermore, they are presented with the same page breaks as the print versions, making it easier to pin cite. The collection of statutes includes alphabetical and chronological indexes, and legislation judicially considered.

The contents for each of these jurisdictions in Jutastat vary with the South African materials dominating the menu. The South African modules are Statutes of South Africa (SSA), Regulations of South Africa (REGS), South African Law Reports (SA), South African Appellate Division Reports (AD), South African Criminal Law Reports (CL) and Juta's Unreported Judgments (U). These primary materials are supplemented by separate digests and other finding aids, namely, the Digest of South African Law, Index and Annotations to South African Law Report and the flynotes and headnotes of the reported cases, known as Extracts from the South African Law Reports.

The SSA covers all South African legislation from 1910 when the British established the Union of South Africa to date. It includes a year round update service, the Weekly Statutes Bulletin, and links to flynotes and headnotes of judgments. The REGS, on the other hand, covers regulations for all statutes passed from 1989 to date in consolidated and annotated form. It is being updated to include regulations dealing with pre-1989 statutes.

The SA contains all leading cases from the superior courts of South Africa as well as selected judgments from Zimbabwe and Namibia. The SA runs from 1947, the year immediately preceding the introduction of apartheid as an official state policy, to date. The judgments are published in the language in which they were originally reported and therefore, some apartheid era cases may be in the Afrikaan language. The AD contains the 37-volume set of Appellate Division Reports from 1910 to 1947 and the Appellate Division Reports from 1947 to date. The CL includes the complete set of the South African Criminal Law Reports from 1990 to date. The Digest of South African Law incorporates a Case Digest, a Legislative Digest and a Bibliography Digest. The Index and Annotation to the SA is consolidated from 1947 to date and includes indexes to Juta's Privy Council Reports, the reports of appeals from South Africa heard by the English Privy Council from 1833 to 1950, edited by J.L.Taitz.

The Tanzanian legal materials are limited to the Tanzania Law Reports (TLR) from 1983 to 1997. The TLR contains judgments from the High Courts of Tanzania and Zanzibar and the Appeal Court of Tanzania. The 1998 to 2000 law reports are still in production and will be added when completed. The Namibian module is the Namibian Law Reports, covering reported cases of the Supreme Court and the High Court of Namibia, since independence in 1990 and presently up to 2003. Pre-1990 Namibian cases may be found in the SA.

The Zimbabwean module covers the Statutes of Zimbabwe starting with the 1996 Revised Edition and consolidated up to July 31, 2002 as well as the case law of the Supreme Court and the High Court of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2002. Pre-1980 case law of Zimbabwe may also be found in the SA.

All these offerings are fully searchable in multiple fields. The case law may be searched by case name, citation, name of court, name(s) of counsel, headnotes or flynotes. The statutes may also be searched by keywords in the title of the statute or by citation.

- CONCURRENCES

May 2004 was significant in the history of the European Union for two reasons. For most of the world, the European Union was enlarged to include the 10 new members from Eastern Europe. For competition and antitrust lawyers, however, May 1, 2004 was the day the European Commission lost its 42-year exclusive jurisdiction to deal with restrictive agreements and practices. Council Regulation 1/2003(2003 OJ L.1/1) entered into force that day to replace Regulation 17 of February 6, 1962 (OJ English Spec. Ed. I, 8 (1959-1963). Consequently, the enforcement of EC competition law is now no longer the sole preserve of the Commission but a Community affair requiring national and supra-national attention. Interested parties will have to make direct judgment about the legality of market behavior affecting more than one European jurisdiction without going to the Commission for a constructive decision.

What this means to competition law scholars and practitioners is that they now have to be more familiar with competition law and practice in all the 25 states of the Community.
E-Competitions is their best ally yet in this endeavor. It provides judgments and decisions by the Courts and antitrust authorities of the EU member States applying antitrust law and also the relevant legislation of the Member States.

In addition, the companion e-bulletin offers analysis of legislation of Member States transposing EC Regulation 1/2003 as well as decisions applying national antitrust laws to the extent that they are directly related to Articles 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty.

The e-Competitions and e-bulletin are both searchable, using access points like member state, subject matter and date restrictions. One may further refine the search with suggested key-words, relevant treaty and regulations provisions, interested institutions and the nature of the text sought.

- vLex

vLex is the most comprehensive database on Spanish Law. It provides access to legislation, case-law, books and journals, legal forms and news from the main Spanish general news and economic journals. Although the text is in Spanish, VLEX's multilingual interface allows you to search the database in English, French, Catalan, and of course, Spanish.

Legislation

The legislation menu includes the Official Journals of Spain as well as the Official Journals of the 17 autonomous communities including Cataluna, Madrid and Navarra. The coverage varies. However, the main section of the Official Journal of Spain starts from January 1, 1979. In addition, it contains all the Spanish Codes. All documents are available in full text in HTML and PDF formats and updated daily. Each statute is annotated with all modifications that affect the original text.

Case-law

vLex boasts of over 1.2 million cases from various Spanish Courts. In Spain judicial power is unitary. The autonomous communities do not have judicial power and their courts are those of the central government. All the reported decisions of the most important courts are available through VLEX. This includes the decisions of the Tribunal Supremo (Supreme Court), Tribunal Constitucional (Constitutional Court) and Tribunales Superiores de Justicia (Courts of Appeals). The lower courts and specialized courts are also selectively covered. The coverage for Supreme Court and Constitutional Court cases start from 1981. The other courts do not go that far back.

All cases are linked to the VLEX thesaurus and to the books and journals that cite them to facilitate cross-referencing and interactive searches. The text of each case is preceded by a case summary.

Books and Journals

vLex provides full text access to Spanish journals and books. To date, it contains more than 75,000 such documents. The most important journals and the most significant doctrine are covered.

Forms

vLex offers over 8,000 sample forms and contracts frequently used by Spanish lawyers. These documents contain an RTF version for easier modification with any word processing software.

News

vLex offers access to the main Spanish general and economic journals and newspapers such as El Pais and El Mundo.

vLex is user-friendly. It has very sophisticated search capabilities, allowing for boolean and proximity searches with wildcard operators. All contents are linked. For instance, a retrieved case has links to the legislation cited by the judge and a retrieved piece of current legislation will have links to prior versions. Search results may be personalized to create alerts that send you an e-mail each time new relevant documents are added to the database. You may store your search results and selected documents in your personal folder, and VLEX offers RSS of all contents of the official government journals to allow you to add your preferred selections to your RSS aggregator.

- Foreign and International Law Resources Database (FILRD)

The first release of Heinonline's Foreign and International Law Resources Database (FILRD) is now available. It contains 675 volumes of significant titles in international law, all from inception.

The current release is in four parts, namely, International Yearbooks and Serials, including international Yearbooks of diverse countries and the Yearbooks of international organizations and institutions, the U.S. Law Digests, being the historical and current digests of U.S. practice of international law, International Tribunals/Judicial Decisions, comprising the decisions of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the Reports of the International Arbitral Awards, and finally Other Significant Works Related to Foreign and International Law, which now contains three historical titles on international law.

All documents on FILRD are in PDF format and fully searchable and marked by the quality we have come to expect from Heinonline. Future releases will include the seminal works of Hugo Grotius, Hans Kelsen and other legal giants.

- THE UNITED KINGDOM STATUTE LAW DATABASE

Christmas came a little earlier in 2006 for United Kingdom legal researchers. On December 20, 2006, the U.K. Statutory Publications Offices unveiled the much anticipated U.K. Statute Law Database ("SLD"), the free, online, official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom.

The SLD covers the primary legislation of the three extant constituent jurisdictions of the United Kingdom (namely England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and those Acts passed by the independent countries that co-existed in the British Isles before the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1801, that are still in force. In substance, the SLD contains the current Acts of the U.K. Parliaments, Acts of the Scottish Parliament, Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly as well as statutes in force from the English Parliament from 1267 to 1706, the Great Britain Parliament from 1707 to 1800, the Scottish Parliament from 1424 to 1707 and from 1999 to date, the Irish Parliament from 1495 to 1800, the Northern Ireland Parliament from 1921 to 1972 and the Northern Ireland Orders in Council from 1974 to date. In addition, the SLD includes the Church of England Measures and the Orders-in-Council passed by the Privy Council. The SLD also covers subordinate legislation made after January 1, 1991. These include the various Statutory Instruments made under the authority contained in the Acts of the three constituent Parliaments of the United Kingdom and the Welsh Statutory Instruments made under the Government of Wales Act, 1998.

The originating text of the SLD is the loose-leaf service known as Statutes in Force ("SIF"), the English equivalent of our United States Code. The base date of the SIF from which the SLD has been taken forward is February 1, 1991. All revisions since then have been incorporated with historical notes and other attributes such as amending instrument citations, authority for amendments incorporated, effective dates and the extent of each piece of legislation. The other main source of legislation held on the SLD is the Northern Ireland Statutes Revised, the official revised version of the primary legislation of Northern Ireland. The base date of the Northern Ireland legislation is January 1, 2006.

To search on SLD, one can use a quick or advance search method involving criteria such as words in title or full text, year, number, type of legislation, or a combination of these criteria. One can also browse the database alphabetically by title or chronologically by year and number.

- INTERNATIONAL LAW in DOMESTIC COURTS (ILDC)

Ever wondered how the Russian courts would rule on whether a foreign embassy has immunity from a counterclaim if it brought the initial claim before a domestic court in the forum state?

Ever tried to find how the Austrian Supreme Court would rule on whether the absolute immunity of a foreign head of state supersedes international human rights?

Do you need to know how the German Federal Constitutional Court decided on the liability of the Federal Republic of Germany to pay compensation to individuals for loss and damage resulting from a massacre perpetrated by the German occupying troops in Greece during World War II?

The answers to these questions and more are now at your finger tips through ILDC. This database, edited by highly regarded international law scholars, brings to you, precedential decisions from domestic courts around the globe on international law. English translations of key passages of all non-English language decisions are provided. Presently covering 65 countries, and counting, it promises to add 150 cases each year on diverse subjects as international human rights, international responsibility, jurisdiction, the law of treaties, the use of force and the law of armed conflict.

ILDC is user-friendly, searchable by country, keyword or full-text. It includes the full-text of the decisions in the original language and scholarly commentary, in English, on the reported cases.

- Journal List

If you are looking for a journal, check out our new Journal List, which is searchable by title or ISSN. This list contains our electronic holdings from 3 database subscriptions (with more to come) as well as our library paper and microform holdings. There's also a link to the University Libraries' journals holdings page.

- Early English Books Online

Fordham University Libraries has recently added an exciting new database, Early English Books Online, which includes "facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700." It's quite an impressive collection, with more than 100,000 items.

The database is amenable to both searching and browsing. In the Basic Search mode, keyword search can be done by itself or in combination with searches of title, subject or author, any of which can be done alone also.

- Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Making of Modern Law

The Library is pleased to announce that we have acquired two fabulous new databases comprising the SEARCHABLE FULL TEXT of almost 32,000 American, British and Commonwealth legal publications from the years between 1700 and 1926. Crucially, these databases contain actual digital representations of the works themselves, including illustrations and marginal notes, and not just their text.

The eighteenth century is included, appropriately, in a database called Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). We have purchased the legal portion, which has over 9000 works.

- The Making of Modern Law covers the years 1800-1926. It has almost 22,000 works, about 15,000 from the nineteenth century and 7000 from the twentieth.

There are many ways to access this wealth of material. First, all the works have been entered into FULLPAC, the library catalog, as though we owned the actual books. This will allow you to find them by author, title, subject, and other usual means. Second, each can be accessed for searching through the Electronic Resources page of the library web site.

Additional Posts will follow with tips on searching for materials in the catalog and through their search engines