Treaties (also called covenants, protocols, acquis, conventions, pacts or charters) are international agreements between states and/or international organizations. Treaties are primary sources of international law.
Overview of the key terms employed in the United Nations Treaty Collection to refer to international instruments binding at international law.
The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL) is a comprehensive online resource containing over 1600 peer-reviewed articles on every aspect of public international law.
Conventional international law is based on consent of state parties and as such treaties applies only between those consenting parties. In determining treaty application,
Treaties only bind nonparties when they form the basis for customary international law. Customary International Law is formed when states consistently act in a certain way (state practice) out of a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris). Evidence of state practice includes domestic legislation, regulations, treaties, judicial decisions, diplomatic communications, NGO and IGO practice (for example General Assembly Resolutions and state voting practice). Look at judicial decisions and executive communications for evidence of opinio juris. A state may escape the application of customary international law by being a persistent objector.
This webinar recording, by Library of Congress legal reference librarian Louis Myers, provides an introduction to resources and strategies to effectively research three distinct areas of treaty practice: U.S. bilateral treaties, foreign bilateral treaties, and multilateral treaties.
Myers explains different treaty compilations and indexes, and both online and physical resources to find treaties. The presentation reviews information specific to treaty research, including an introduction and overview of special terms and phrases used in treaty practice.
Louis also provides detailed research examples to find U.S. treaties, select foreign treaties, and multilateral treaties. Lastly, resources on travaux préparatoires (similar to U.S. legislative history materials) are introduced and discussed.
Find Secondary Sources Explaining how to Interpret Treaty Law
Before you examine the treaty, you should know what laws apply to treaty interpretation. Just as you need to understand contract law in a particular state in order to understand a particular contract. Treaty law also has it's own vocabulary, words have a particular meaning and you will need to understand the meaning of these words in order to understand how to interpret the treaty.
If there is an official website for the treaty, as there are with many major treaties, this information is usually found on that website. Otherwise, you can check a Treaty Index, or a database containing the full-text of the treaty.
This is a also a good option to find the full text if you have tried searching in full-text databases and retrieved too many irrelevant results.
Which source you will find most useful for locating the treaty text depends on what information you have about the treaty:
Frequently referred to as Domestic Implementing Legislation.
These sources, are often specific to a particular treaty or legal topic.
These are official records of a treaty negotiation. They are sometimes published. The travaux are often used to help clarifying the intentions of a treaty or other instrument.
The official website for the treaty itself may provide a bibliography of the most valuable secondary sources and commentary on a specific treaty.
You can then use the UC Law SF Catalog or other databases to locate the desired publication, or to look for other relevant commentary.
For help understanding the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, here is an Introductory note.
If you prefer to watch videos to learn more, explore the Lecture Series on this website.
The other tabs provide an explanation of how this treaty on the law of treaties came to be, as well as some important historical documents, that reveal how this treaty was negotiated. These types of documents are known in the field of International Law as Travaux Préparatoires.
Full-Text of the Convention as it appears in the publication International Legal Materials, in Lexis.
Location: 5th Stacks
The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, regulating treaties between States, lies at the heart of international law. This commentary interprets the Convention's 85 articles clearly and precisely. It covers such major topics as reservations to treaties, their interpretation and the grounds for terminating a treaty, for instance breach. Emphasis is placed on the practice of States and tribunals and on academic writings. It contains further sections on customary international law and the Convention's history while providing up-to-date information on ratifications and reservations. This commentary is a must for practitioners and academics wishing to establish the meaning and scope of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
Call Number: KZ1301 .O94 2012 ISBN: 9780198712961 Publication Date: 2014-05-27Location: 5th Stacks
Comprehensive coverage of treaty law and practice providing a single reference point for students, academics, and practitioners
Expert contributions drawn from academia, governments, and international organizations to provide a wide range of perspectives
Accompanied by an appendix of sample treaty clauses and instruments, drawn from real world examples
This book represents one of the first comparative studies of international treaty ratification processes in multiple issue areas. The study sets out to fill a gap in political science scholarship by investigating the role that international and domestic political actors and conditions play in the critical, post-commitment phase of cooperation. The book employs the comparative case study method, drawing on original research, elite interviews, and discursive analyses of government documents in Europe, Australia, and North America. Cases examine a select number of treaties on trade cooperation, the environment, European integration, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The book concludes that norms and executive strategies play an especially significant role in shaping ratification outcomes, and it has implications for theories of international negotiation and foreign policy analysis as well as the practice of diplomacy.
Call Number: 5th Stacks ; KZ1304 .G37 2015 ISBN: 0199669236 Publication Date: 2015-08-18This book provides a guide to interpreting treaties properly in accordance with the modern rules for treaty interpretation which are codified in the 'Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties'. These rules now apply to virtually all treaties both in an international context and within many national legal systems where treaties have an impact on a large and growing range of matters. Lawyers, administrators, diplomats, and officials at international organisations are increasingly likely to encounter issues of treaty interpretation which require not only knowledge of the relevant rules but also how these rules have been, and are to be, applied in practice.
Depending on which nation states are parties to the treaty, there are different sources that provide information on the status of the treaty.
If you know the topic of your treaty, you can start here and browse to find the status information on a treaty. This status information also provides a link to the full-text of the treaty.
In HeinOnline, there may be a Treaty Summary link on the top left of the page that will provide some treaty status information.
A Treaty Index is a tool for finding treaties based on the involved parties, subject matter, dates of entry into force, or other related characteristics.
Searchable database of basic information on over 1,500 of the most significant multilateral treaties from 1856 to the present, with details of where the full-text of each treaty may be obtained in paper and, if available, electronic form on the Internet. The Index includes only those treaties where there are three or more parties to the instrument.
If the U.S. is a party to the treaty you can use these finding tool to get more information about the treaty, including some status information and citation(s) to the treaty that you can use in HeinOnline to pull up the full text.
This provides the most recent official list of treaties in force in two PDF documents. It is not intuitive to use. In the main document, Part I refers to Bilateral treaties and is organized alphabetically by the name of the other party. Part II refers to Multilateral treaties and is organized by topic.
Let's say you want to know what treaties with the U.S. are in force that deal with the environment, you can use a keyword search to find the bilateral treaties and then skip down to the end of the list of Bilateral treaties to the contents page for the Multilateral treaties to find the page where the Multilateral treaties on the Environment start.
Numerical Lists of Bilateral and Multilateral Treaties and Agreements of the United States in Force.Scroll down to see the Citation Navigator and input your citation. This also works for most other treaty citations.
You can use this citation search field to search for citations in the following formats: 56 Stat. 1354; TIAS 11084;161 UNTS 193; 25 I.L.M. 543; 3 Bevans 630; 33 UST 3476; 155 LNTS 349; TS 981.
If your treaty citation is not listed here, this is still a good first place to try searching for it.
This lesson will provide an understanding of the language, mechanics, and process of conducting research of U.S. treaties: the major sources of treaty texts (both official and unofficial), major indexes and finding tools, resources for updating treaties, and a basic strategy for treaty research.
You can use the search function to look for U.S. Treaties on Congress.gov if you know the name or have some language from the treaty.
This library includes all U.S. treaties, whether currently in-force, expired, or not-yet officially published. It includes prominent collections such as the United States Treaties and Other International Agreements set (commonly referred to as the "Blue set"), as well as famous sets from Bevans, Miller, Malloy and others.
The U.S. Treaties on LEXIS (USTRTY) file is a unique electronic compilation of full-text ratified and unratified treaties and international agreements, where the United States is a party or signatory. This includes not only treaties signed by the President with the advice and consent of the US Senate, but also international agreements from the U.S. Government.
Documents are obtained directly from the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Senate, as well as authoritative U.S. government publications, including: - Treaty Documents: Treaties transmitted to the Senate for consideration, usually including transmittal messages from the President and the Secretary of State. - Slip Documents: Treaties and international agreements released by the US Department of State, but not yet printed in TIAS. - Treaties and Other International Acts Series (T.I.A.S) from 1985 - official slip treaty publication from the Government Printing Office (GPO). - US Treaties and Other International Agreements (U.S.T.) 1949-1984 - permanent form of official treaty publication. - Bevan's Treaties and Other International Agreements 1776-1949 - the definitive retrospective compilation of US treaties and agreements. In addition to treaties that are "in-force", this compilation includes older terminated, superseded, or abolished treaties for your historical research needs. To determine if a particular treaty or international agreement is still in force, please refer to the latest edition of the U.S. Department of State's publication, U.S. Treaties In Force, on the LexisNexis services. Each document will have a LEXIS Cite, and where available, citations to Bevans, UST, and US Statutes at Large. Cites will be LEXSEEable, and links will be provided in the body of the documents. Related Files on LexisNexis: For treaty legislative histories, please see CIS Legislative Histories. For selected treaties and agreements where the US is not a party, see the publication International Legal Materials (ILM) from the American Society of International Law. For tax treaties, please see CCH World Tax Treaties.
U.S. Treaties and Other International Agreements includes American Indian treaties to which the U.S.A. is a party.
North American Free Trade Agreement Coverage of international treaties begins with volume 8 Statutes at Large (1778) through volume 64 (1949) when United States Treaties and Other International Agreements (U.S.T.) became the official publication.
Coverage for U.S.T. begins with volume 1 part 1 and continues through volume 35 part IV (TIAS 10978, 1984). Subsequent treaties and other international agreements published in the Treaties and Other International Acts Series (TIAS) from TIAS No. 10979 forward are also included.
Senate Treaty Document coverage begins with the 103rd Congress (1993), and State Department documents with State Dept. No. 90-1 (1990). Coverage also includes ""Case-Zablocki Act"" documents transmitted by the Secretary of State to the Congress beginning with 1990 transmittals. New Senate and State Department documents are added as they are made available by the government.
The Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G.A.T.T.) and the text of the North American Free Trade Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America, the Government of Canada and the Government of the United Mexican States (N.A.F.T.A.) are included.
Parallel citations to the primary Stat, UST and TIAS citations are displayed when available.
A document is a treaty or other international agreement.
Print publications United States Statutes at Large and United States Treaties and Other International Agreements as well as Slip Copy obtained directly from the federal government for Westlaw.
In addition to these searchable full-text U.S. treaty sources within Lexis and Westlaw there are also topic specific sources.
This file contains International Agreements from the United States Code Service. The Agreements selected for inclusion in the United States Code Service generally relate to intellectual property matters or civil litigation procedural matters. The United States is a party to all agreements included in this file. The conventions included are:
Universal Copyright Convention - Universal Copyright Convention as Revised - Berne Convention As Revised - Buenos Aires Convention - Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms - Convention Relating to the Distribution of Programme-Carrying Signals Transmitted by Satellite - Patent Cooperation Treaty - Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property - Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks - General Inter-American Convention for Trademark and Commercial Protection - Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks - Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards - Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters - Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters - Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Transportation by Air ('Warsaw Convention') - Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction - United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods - Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods as Amended by the Protocol Amending the Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods - Inter-American Convention on International Commercial Arbitration - Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legislation for Foreign Public Documents - Inter-American Convention on Letters Rogatory - Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Commission of the European Communities Regarding the Application of Their Competition Laws - WIPO Copyright Treaty - WIPO Performances And Phonogram Treaty - Trademark Law Treaty - Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air ("Montreal Convention") - Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption - Vienna Convention on Consular Relations - Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations - Charter of the United Nations ("U.N. Charter") - Geneva Convention (I) for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field - Geneva Convention (II) for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea - Geneva Convention (III) relative to the treatment of prisoners of war - Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war - Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment - Optional protocol to the convention on the rights of the child on the involvement of children in armed conflict - Optional protocol to the convention on the rights of the child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography - Convention on prohibitions or restrictions on the use of certain conventional weapons which may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects - Protocol relating to the status of refugees - International covenant on civil and political rights.
The Appendix to this secondary source provides: Annotated texts of all US income tax treaties; texts of US estate and gift tax treaties, tax information exchange agreements, transportation agreements and others.
For Treaties between the U.S. and Tribal Governments, see:
