This presentation draws on my doctoral research, which was conducted on traditional cultural expressions in international law. This subject still fills me with passion even after having spent many years studying it. To sum up my Ph.D. thesis in a sentence, I studied how international law embraces traditional dances, songs, handicrafts, designs, and rituals. Very diverse fields of laws were relevant for this research, but in the framework of this presentation, the focus was kept on intellectual property. The goal of this presentation was to provide answers to two essential questions. The first question relates to the definition of traditional cultural expressions (I), the second one concerned the reasons underpinning the introduction of this concept in international law (II).

The year is 2045, and my grandchildren (as yet unborn) are exploring the attic of my house (as yet unbought). They find a letter dated 1995 and a CD-ROM (compact disk). The letter claims that the disk contains a document that provides the key to obtaining my fortune (as yet unearned). My grandchildren are understandably excited, but they have never seen a CD before—except in old movies—and even if they can somehow find a suitable disk drive, how will they run the software necessary to interpret the information on the disk? How can they read my obsolete digital document?

In a modern, civilized, democratic and political state like India, it is the law of the laws – the Constitution of India – which has conferred freedom on us and the right to live with human dignity and conscience. The constitution's widespread and deeply pervasive network of laws leaves hardly any human activity outside its net which is not governed by some law or the other. Birth, death and marriage have to be registered. There are laws on how to move or drive on the road, how to travel, where to smoke or not to smoke, what to eat and what not to eat, where to go and where to refrain from going and so on. The air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the food that we eat, and the house in which we live are all governed by law. From a little child purchasing an eraser or a pencil, to an adult travelling by air within or outside the country – all are subject to the law. Law determines the boundaries of human behavior which determines the limits of transgression as well as compliance. Everyone is supposed to know the law and the ignorance of law does not excuse anyone. So pervasive, complex and fast changing are the laws that a car bumper reads “Do it today, tomorrow it may be illegal,” such is the pace of today's growth and evolution of the law.

The founding fathers of the U.S. Constitution had an abiding faith in the power that knowledge bestows. The notion that “knowledge is power” dates back to the teachings of philosophers (from Bacon to Nietzsche), and was understood and practiced long before that by statesmen, scoundrels, and spies of all ages. The ancient Chinese ruled for millennia by maintaining a monopoly on knowledge and education.

The legal system in India follows the common law model prevalent in the countries which were at one time under British Rule or were part of the British Commonwealth. The jurisprudence followed in India is almost the same as the one prevalent in England, though it has been cross-fertilized by typical Indian values.

Islamic and Jewish law has, for years, been the orphan of the Library of Congress classification scheme. Left without a place of its own it has been either shoehorned into the religion schedules, or set aside in homegrown organizational schemes. In either case access to these materials was often compromised, and retrieval difficult.

Fortunately, LC, in its work on the law schedules, has finally been able to generate draft versions of KBM–Jewish Law, and KBP–Islamic Law. We are fortunate that someone of Jolande Goldberg's prodigious talent and incredible energy was assigned the task of developing both of these schedules. She has overcome numerous roadblocks, and found consensus where there seemed to be none. The new schedules, as you will see, are both elegant structures in themselves, as well as constructed in such a way as to be a powerful tool for comparative research.

I. Introduction

We seem, yet again, to be at one of those moments in time, so common in the last quarter of the 20th century, and likely to be continuous in the 21st, when the future appears as a melting pot of possibilities for law libraries, particularly university law libraries. This time the uncertainty is largely driven by the potential advent of Web-based learning, and the as yet largely undeveloped nature of the law school response to the possibilities of education outside of the traditional classroom model. Uncertainty is also due to the growing awareness that IT literacy is increasing rapidly among our user community, and that students in particular now prefer electronic sources of information over print – sources which, increasingly, they can access from places other than the physical law library.

The content of this essay is the result of more than ten years of trial and error. It was envisioned as a tool for personal guidance when drafting papers. If the recommendations included in this essay are correctly implemented, they will help law students and researchers write a law paper of publishable quality.

This article is a brief sketch of recent development of the doctrine and practice in Russian constitutional and administrative law. The focus is made on the controversial issues of state organization and status of individuals, as well as the realization of legal principles established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) pursues a concept of co-operative security which encompasses commitments by participating States in the areas of military security, political co-operation, human rights, economy, culture and the environment. Its priorities are to consolidate common values and build civil societies, prevent local conflicts, restore stability and bring peace to war-torn areas, overcome real and perceived security deficits and avoid the creation of new divisions by promoting a co-operative system of security. The OSCE is the primary instrument for early warning, conflict management and crisis management in the OSCE region, i.e. Europe, Central Asia and North America. Its basic feature is the strict equality of all 55 participating States, which is well reflected in its decision-making process. With a few exceptions, decision-making at meetings within the framework of the OSCE is only possible by consensus, which is considered to be achieved if no State has expressed an objection. States are, however, allowed to make reservations or interpretative statements.

The acquisition of legal information is critical to how lawyers conduct their work. The use of information-seeking models as a theoretical lens to analyze user behavior has been exhausted in the scholarly literature. However, very few models illustrate the dynamic relationship between lawyer and information professional. Furthermore, these models do not consider the demands of accessing legal information in a time-constrained environment. This paper explores this phenomenon and proposes a model that aids in understanding how practitioners obtain legal information in a law firm environment.

The modern history of Vietnam indicates that the country has always had more than one legal system, whether the country was unified or divided. These systems have changed and been influenced by indigenous customs, by Chinese, French, American, and socialist laws, and by other political or violent events. For example, starting from the period when Vietnam was under French domination, the country had three separate sets of laws for its three geographical regions: 1) Tonkin in the North; 2) Annam in the Center; and 3) Cochin China in the South.

All professions are dependent to some degree on their corpus of literature. For several reasons this dependency is especially acute for the legal profession. First, a large part of legal literature is “authoritative” in a sense different from the literature of, say, medicine or history. Legal authority is binding, backed by the coercive apparatus of the state. One is compelled to be familiar with legal authority, for, in the ancient phrase, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Second, the very principles of Western legal systems require that governmental bodies operate according to law. Courts must resolve their cases in accordance with the law. This jurisprudential theorem imposes upon lawyers and judges the duty of identifying and examining all relevant legal authority. Failure to exercise due care in carrying out this duty may render the attorney liable to a suit for malpractice.

The process through which the founding Treaties of the European Communities came to function and be regarded as a constitution and the role of the Court of Justice in that process are well known. According to a widespread view, the Court would have been the main or even the only actor in the constitutionalization of the Treaties, transforming them into constitutional entities by virtue of some judgments of the 60s and 70s. For many, in those judgments the Court would have been excessively prointegrationist, too audacious, almost “running wild”. At some point, a number of constitutional courts, in particular the German Constitutional Court with its Maastricht decision of 1993, would have voiced their concerns, tracing potential limits to judicially driven integration. As a result, the Court of the 90s would have become wiser, more self-restrained, at times even minimalistic – more like a court and less like an omnipotent legislator or “pouvoir constituent.” With the calling of the European Convention and the drafting of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, the Court would have been more than ever on a second plane, as if constitutional matters had finally returned to the political actors to which they belong.

Australia has always been a place of legal pluralism. Before the British colonists brought with them the common law and the statute law of England, there were indigenous systems of law. Indeed, there were very many of them. They did not cease to exist just because English law was imported. Sadly, for over 200 years, their existence was not officially recognised by the Anglo-Australian legal system. In 1992, in Mabo v State of Queensland [No.2], the High Court of Australia did more than “invent” native title. It made this nation officially a legally pluralist one. The common law now recognises, and gives effect to, indigenous law with respect to land tenure and, possibly, with respect to other aspects of life and death as well. Native title is what indigenous law says it is, no more and no less, except to the extent that non-indigenous law operates to “extinguish” or “impair” native title. The first inquiry in any application for a determination of native title must be as to the continuing existence of an indigenous legal system and the manner in which that legal system deals with entitlements in relation to the relevant land. If such a system survives and gives entitlement to people, it must then be asked whether non-Aboriginal law has “extinguished” or “impaired” those entitlements. In truth, this inquiry is as to whether the non-indigenous legal system has withdrawn its recognition of those entitlements, because of its creation of interests, or recognition of activities, incompatible with the continuing existence of indigenous entitlements. The entitlements continue to exist in indigenous law, despite any “extinguishment” or “impairment.”

This article provides an overview of the current status of UK national open access (OA) policies, their implementation, and the responses of HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) and other key players. Prior to 2012 a number of funders' OA policies had been published. Although many medical scientists were publishing OA articles and subject pre-print repositories were active in some disciplines (for example ArXiv and RePEc EconPapers), most academics were not complying with their funder's OA policy, the policies were not being policed, and in many disciplines, OA was not on researchers' radar.

The article concludes that OA in the UK has changed considerably in recent years and is continuing to evolve rapidly, mainly due to the effect of UK funder OA policies. There is an urgent need for increased automation to support greater accuracy and efficiency, which needs input from, and will benefit, the major players: researchers, universities, funders, and publishers. Sustainable funding needs to be coupled with efforts to drive down costs. The reasons behind the push for OA needs discussion with researchers, some of whom view OA as an additional burden. The value placed on OA needs to be weighted more towards the benefits of OA within a less compliance dominated environment. There is a long way to go, but reflecting on the last four years, the UK has made enormous strides towards widespread OA.

As a country, Ethiopia needs no introduction. Its three thousand years of history has been told and documented by many who lived in and traveled to Ethiopia The discovery of Lucy, the 3.2 million years old hominid, iconic fossil in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 1974, attests to the fact that Ethiopia is indeed one of the oldest nations in the world. The origin of the northern Ethiopian Empire, is chronicled in the legendary story of Cush, the son of Ham and the founder of the Axumite Kingdom, who gave the name Ethiopis to the area surrounding Axum and later to his son. Ethiopia is thus derived from it which in Greek means land of the burnt or black faces.

This essay fills a gap by exploring compliance theory in international law to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After introducing the topic and setting the context, it delves into the question of why nations follow international law. Interacting with prominent theoretical models (including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, self-interest, and a comparative perspective with Europe), it arrives at a critical synthesis in the conclusion.

At the time of these interviews, conducted in the Squire Law Library in April and May 2005, Kurt Lipstein was 96 years old and had been associated, in various capacities, with the Library and the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University for over seventy years.