Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citations

The New York University Journal of International Law and Politics has made its Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citation available on the Internet. (close to 300 pages in PDF format).

OK, not exactly bedtime reading but it "provides persons intending to submit legal materials to a foreign jurisdiction or international forum the ability to cite such materials according to the jurisdiction’s or forum’s own standards. Second, and perhaps more usefully, the Guide will allow persons unfamiliar with foreign and international citation standards (but wanting to study or apply foreign or international legal material or using such standards in their own work) the ability to understand and interpret the import of such standards in that jurisdiction’s or forum’s own terms. With this comes the ability, for example, to understand basic information like the type and hierarchy of the court which renders a particular decision or the type of code a law comes from. Third, on a more prudential level, with this information, scholars, judges, and practicing lawyers faced with such standards will be able to more easily identify and locate the source from the source jurisdiction according to its own, more familiar citation norms."