Library Boy: Updated Guide to Research on Vienna Convention on Consular Relations

GlobaLex, the electronic collection created by the Hauser Global Law School Program at the New York University School of Law, recently updated its Guide to Research on Vienna Convention on Consular Relations:

"Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which 177 nations are party, requires a nation arresting or detaining a foreign national to afford the detainee access to his or her consulate and to notify the foreign national of the right of consular access. In the number of U.S. cases involving foreign nationals, defendants have raised the issue of failure by the detaining authorities to make the necessary notifications. Many of these cases have involved death penalty and a number of cases have been heard by the Supreme Court. A series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions have underscored the difficulty of this issue: treaties are negotiated on behalf of the United States, while arrests and prosecutions are made on the local level. Although the principle of U.S. compliance with the treaty obligations is accepted, enforcement has been spotty, and there has been no meaningful penalty for non-compliance at the local level. Foreign governments have brought challenges to the United States in the International Court of Justice, which has ruled against the United States on three occasions during the period from 1998 through 2004. Following the latest ICJ ruling, the Bush Administration withdrew from the Optional Protocol to the Consular Convention submitting to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. This guide describes sources required to research the issue of compliance with the Vienna Convention notification obligations; whether the need is of a practical or scholarly nature."

The Guide is divided into sections on: