Citing to International Materials

The Bluebook’s Rule 21 explains how to cite to international materials. This section provides citation details on treaties, international caselaw, arbitrations, U.N. sources, materials from inter-governmental organizations, yearbooks, digests, and more. Another useful Bluebook section is Table 2 on foreign jurisdictions. The Bluebook is also available online.

For citation help on the web, check out the University of Minnesota’s Frequently-Cited Treaties and Other International Instruments, which was written with citation checkers in mind. Another great source is the Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citations [K89 .G85 2009].

For additional insight into United Nations materials, see Citing UN Materials: Issues and Strategies by Cyril Robert Emery, a librarian at the UNCITRAL Law Library.

Finally, EISIL (Electronic Information System for International Law) can also be helpful. Under any source document in EISIL there is “More Information” which includes a field for legal citation. The legal citation in EISIL for the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties is a good example of several possible citation sources for this document.