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International Law Reports Online: yes, really!

Justis rep Keith Waddoups is back on British soil – or rather polyester carpet – following his appearance at last week’s Annual Meeting of ASIL, where he demonstrated a sample database from the forthcoming International Law Reports Online to an enthusiastic audience.

Though we occupied little more than a small corner of the stand booked by CUP, our partners in this venture, traffic and interest in the long-awaited product ran high.

Delegates at the well-attended event included academic law librarians, lawyers and government officials from the US, Europe and China, and from international bodies such as the World Trade Organization and Nato.

But, said Waddoups, despite – or perhaps because of – their credentials, it seemed some of the attendees couldn’t quite believe that putting the ILR online was a bona fide endeavour. Digitizing the last major set of reports to have remained exclusively in print for so long, it seems, was a faraway dream for many would-be users of the service.

“I think people thought it was an elaborate April Fool”, speculates Waddoups, who overheard a couple of incredulous experts discussing the project over coffee.

He may have a point. The last relevant story we ran was based on an email we unwittingly dispatched on 1st April. Though all publicity is good publicity, we should perhaps take this opportunity to reassure interested parties once and for all that the only joke was my recent internal appointment as “red-letter day communications monitor”.

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