By
Brian R. Israel & Louise S. Gibbons
Editors-in-Chief, Berkeley Journal of International
Law
April, 2009
[ PDF version ]
It is our great pleasure to introduce Publicist, an online publication of the Berkeley Journal of International Law (BJIL). Publicist supplements BJIL’s print journal with comparatively shorter and more frequent essays written by leading practitioners and scholars of international law. “[T]he teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations” are identified as a subsidiary source of international law in the Statute of the International Court of Justice. Publicist is designed to facilitate the rapid, global dissemination of teachings of these contemporary “publicists.”
The ways in which the international legal community shares ideas has evolved dramatically in the decades since BJIL’s founding in 1982. A substantial share of legal research has migrated from library stacks to desktop computers, and weblogs (“blogs”) provide for the timely, interactive exchange ideas. Publicist takes full advantage of new technologies and bridges a gap between law reviews and new mediums such as blogs. Publicist strikes a balance that is more analytically rigorous than most blogs, yet comparatively timely, accessible, and easy to digest.
Publicist welcomes submissions analyzing current topics in public and private international law. Essays should be brief (around 3000) and more-lightly-footnoted than a traditional law review article. The concise format facilitates the rapid publication of essays. We aim to edit and publish submissions within weeks of acceptance. In order to do this, BJIL editors will not verify each citation as we do for our print journal; ultimate responsibility for accuracy rests with authors.
Essays will be edited and published individually as they are submitted and accepted. For citation purposes, essays will be grouped into volumes and paginated in Adobe PDF format. Our preferred citation is: [Vol.] Berkeley J. Int’l L. Publicist [Essay] (2009). From time to time, Publicist will publish thematic volumes organized around Berkeley symposia and other events of interest to the international law community. For instance, each spring Publicist will publish a volume based on BJIL’s annual Stefan A. Riesenfeld Symposium. For these volumes, the length of essays may vary and include longer pieces.
Essays are available for download in Adobe PDF format and online viewing in HTML. The online format enables readers to comment on essays, if the author chooses to enable the comment function.
We invite you to submit and comment on essays, as well as provide feedback and ideas on how best we can use this exciting new platform for international legal scholarship.
Copyright 2009 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
[ back to top ]
