Annual Meeting Programs

Annual Meeting Programs

Listed below is an outline of the programs that have been sponsored by the Foreign, Comparative & International Law Special Interest Section over the years. For 1996 and 1997, all of the program proposals submitted (whether selected or not) have been listed. For more information on selected programs prior to 1995, see Houdek and Goldner, AALL Annual Meeting: An Annotated Index of the Recordings (Littleton, CO: F.B. Rothman, 1989-).

  • 2019 - 2023

    2023 ANNUAL MEETING (Boston, MA)

    Please visit AALL eLearning to find recordings of selected AALL Annual Meeting Programs and Webinar Recordings.

    Researching the Implementation of Foreign and International Law on International Indigenous Peoples

    • Speakers: Alexander Burdett, Reference Librarian for Foreign & International Law at NYU Law Library; Christopher Dykes, Head of Public Services at University of Houston Law Library
    • Coordinated by Marcelo Rodriguez, Assistant Librarian for Foreign, Comparative, and International Law at University of Arizona College of Law Library
    • Moderated by Victoria J. Szymczak, Library Director at William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii
    • Indigenous Peoples International Law Research Handout

    Recognizing the Third Sovereign: Promoting Awareness of, Respect for, and Access to Native American Tribal Law

    • Speakers: David Greisen, Chief Executive Officer, Founding Director at Open Law Library; Amber Kennedy Madole, Research Services, Indigenous Law and Policy Librarian, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law at University of Southern California Gould School of Law, Rachel Nelson, Law Librarian at National Indian Law Library and Native American Legal Rights Fund; Rebecca Plevel, Reference Librarian at University of South Carolina School of Law
    • Coordinated by Bonnie Shucha, Associate Dean, Library & Information Services; Director of the Law Library at University of Wisconsin Law School
    • Presentation information available at Recognizing the Third Sovereign LibGuide

    Cultural Humility, Putting Actions After Words

    • Speakers: Shira Megerman, Senior Legal Information Librarian, Boston University School of Law; Kirstin Nelson, Law Librarian & Diversity and Inclusion Council Executive Director at USDA National Agricultural Library; Sarah Ryan, Associate Professor, Dept. Information Science, University of North Texas
    • Coordinated by Ajaye Bloomstone, Acquisitions Librarian at LSU Law Center and Anna Lawless-Collins, Associate Director for Systems & Collection Services at Boston University School of Law
    • Moderated by Ajaye Bloomstone
    • Presentation slides with speaker information

    Researching South African Government and Legal Information

    • Speakers: Michelle Pearse, Senior Research & Data Librarian, Harvard Law Library; Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, Associate Professor of Legal Studies, University of Massachusetts
    • Moderator: Yemisi Dina, Chief Law Librarian, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
    • Coordinator: Marcelo Rodriguez, Assistant Librarian for Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, University of Arizona College of Law Library
    • Slides available on AALL eLearning

    2022 ANNUAL MEETING (DENVER, CO)

    Please visit AALL eLearning to find recordings of selected AALL Annual Meeting Programs and Webinar Recordings.

    How to Research Brazilian Law and Government Information

    • Speakers: Abby Dos Santos, Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered; Karina Condra, Sturm College of Law, University of Denver; Juan-Andres Fuentes, Harvard Law School Library; Sergio Stone, Robert Crown Law Library, Stanford Law School; Marcelo Rodriguez, University of Arizona College of Law; Caitlin Hunter, UCLA Law Library
    • Presentation Slides with Speaker Information

    Kyoto, Paris, COP26: International Climate Change Mechanisms

    • Speakers: Marylin Averill, Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School; Gillian Bower, Colorado State University; Alice Madden, Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School
    • Coordinated by Marcelo Rodriguez, University of Arizona College of Law; and moderated by Trezlen Drake, Yale Law School
    • Presentation Slides with Speaker Information

    African Law IG Meeting

    • Developments in the African Continent on Free Trade by Prof. Olabisi Akinkugbe, Viscount Bennett Professor of Law, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Coordinated by Yemisi Dina.

    2021 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (DUE TO COVID-19)

    Please visit AALL eLearning to find recordings of selected AALL Annual Meeting Programs and Webinar Recordings.

    Facing Challenges: Access to Justice in a Global ‘Virtual World’.

    • Speakers: Chiara Fioravanti, a researcher at the Institute of Legal Informatics and Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy; Joan Lijun Liu, a curator at the Institute of Humanities and Social Science Data, Fudan University Library, China (People’s Republic); Sonia Poulin, Chief Executive Officer of the Justice Education Society, Vancouver, British Columbia
    • Coordinated by Dennis Sears, Foreign and International Law Senior Law Librarian, Brigham Young University, and moderated by Alison Shea, Research & Instructional Librarian (Foreign, Comparative & International Law) & Adjunct Professor of Law

    The Ins and Outs of India Legal Research: Learning How to Find India Primary and Secondary Law.

    • Coordinated by Mandy Lee, Head of Research & Instruction, Chicago-Kent College of Law
    • Speakers: Sunil Rao, Foreign and International Law Librarian at University of Wisconsin-Madison Law Library; Pushya Veeramachaneni, Outreach and Library Services Law Librarian at Florida International University
    • Presentation Slides with Speaker Information

    Sovereignty, Native America, and Legal Culture: Why Accessing and Understanding Tribal Law Just Became More Important.

    • Moderator/Coordinator: Darla W. Jackson, Research Librarian, University of Oklahoma Law Library.
    • Speakers: Bonnie Shucha, Associate Dean for Library & Information Services & Director of the Law Library, University of Wisconsin Law School; David Greisen, Chief Executive Officer & Founding Director of the Open Law Library; Christina Steinbrecker Jack, Chief Product Officer at Fastcase.
    • Recent and potential developments in national, state, and tribal governments’ responses to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the McGirt and Murphy The discussion emphasized the importance of improving access to tribal codes and court opinions, introduced three innovative resources that aim to address this need, and discussed potential solutions to challenges for resource developers.

    African Law IG Meeting

    2020 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (DUE TO COVID-19)

    Please visit AALL eLearning to find recordings of selected AALL Annual Meeting Programs and Webinar Recordings.

    2019 ANNUAL MEETING (WASHINGTON, DC)

    • GDPR: What Your Library Needs to Know (Sara Baseggio, Alison Shea, and Edward McNicholas)

  • 2014 - 2018

    2018 Annual Meeting (Baltimore, MD)

    2017 Annual Meeting (Austin, TX)

    2016 Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL)

    2015 Annual Meeting (Philadelphia, PA)

    2014 Annual Meeting (San Antonio, TX)

    • Mexican Law and Legal Research: Overcoming the Challenges (FCIL-SIS sponsored program)
    • Hot Topic: Land Grabbing: Accessing Information to Protect Property Rights of Indigenous People

  • 2009 - 2013

    2013 Annual Meeting (Seattle, WA)

    • Lifting the Veil: How to Effectively Research Foreign Customary Laws
    • WHO and ICRC: They Stand for Free Public Health and Humanitarian Law (FCIL-SIS sponsored program)
    • PAC-Rim Legal Values: A Primer on Top Legal Resources from Non-English Speaking Jurisdictions
    • FCIL Librarianship Core Competencies
      • Supplemental materials: “Plan: Training Foreign and International Law Librarians: The Next Generation,” in Training the Future Generation of International and Foreign Law Librarians: Issues Papers, Summary, Plan 1-20 (Judith Wright ed., American Association of Law Libraries, 1992)(AALL Occasional Papers: No.12).
      • Training the Future Generation of International and Foreign Law Librarians: Issues Papers, Summary, Plan (Judith Wright ed., American Association of Law Libraries, 1992)(AALL Occasional Papers: No. 12)(.pdf full text in 4 Parts: Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4)
      • 1991 Town Meeting, Side 1 (.mp3, 42MB)
      • 1991 Town Meeting, Side 2 (.mp3 , 37MB)
      • 1991 Town Meeting, Written Transcript (by Lyonette Louis-Jacques)(.pdf, 21 pages).

    2012 Annual Meeting (Boston, MA)

    • Piercing the Veil of Sovereignty: The Sources of International Human Rights Law: Part I
    • Piercing the Veil of Sovereignty: The Sources of International Human Rights Law: Part II
    • The Diplomat Librarian: Working with LLMs, International Scholars, Students, and Faculty
    • Chinese Law – Real Time!
    • Debating United States Policy for the International Criminal Court: Will/Should the Next Administration Seek to Ratify the Rome Statute?
    • Right to Be Lost: Comparative Law Approaches to Internet Privacy and Personal Data Protection
    • Class KIA-KIX: A Revolutionary New Classification Schedule for the 21st Century
    • Access to Indian Legal Information in a Digital Environment: A Comparative Study of Electronic Commercial Databases and Public Domain Resources in Law (ppt)

    2011 Annual Meeting (Philadelphia, PA)

    2010 Annual Meeting (Denver, CO)

    • Destination…Treaty! – Treaty Handout
    • The Rights of Indigenous Peoples – Electronic Resources Guide and Select Bibliography (cases, conventions, and more) and Blog
    • After Hotel Rwanda and Welcome to Sarajevo: Preserving Trial Evidence and Documentation in a Multi-Media Age
    • A Baobab Grows in Brooklyn: Training U.S. Law Students To Work in a South African Legal Aid Clinic
    • Navigating Your Way to the Classroom: Law Librarians Teaching New Law School Classes
    • Conflict of Laws in a Federation: The Nigerian Experience (podcast)

    2009 Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)

  • 2004 - 2008

    2008 Annual Meeting (Portland, OR)

    2007 Annual Meeting (New Orleans, LA)

    • Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons
    • De-coding Civil Codes: Appreciating Napolean’s Code and its Legacy
    • Rome: The Power of Film to Teach Foundations of Roman and Civil Law
    • Globalization Moved My Cheese: Or, How Do I Find International Law? – Wenger’s International Law Bibliography
    • A Closer Look: Uncovering the Spanish Roots of Louisiana Civil Law
    • LC’s Classification Web: An Electronic Gateway to Indigenous Government and Law in the Americas

    2006 Annual Meeting (St. Louis, MO)

    • Developing Foreign, Comparative and International Law Collections: Sources, Strategies and Techniques
    • Confronting Atrocities: Issues and Resources (FCIL-SIS Roundtable) – Atrocities Research
    • Do We Have the Numbers? Empirical Research in Law – International Law as a Case Study
    • International Law in the Heartland: Implications for Consular Rights of Foreign Nationals
    • International Law in the Heartland: Implications for Consular Rights of Foreign Nationals
    • Pioneering Global Health Law: Pandemics, Trends, and Research Strategies
    • Post-Soviet Law: Sources and Access (FCIL-SIS Forum)
    • International Legal Process: The Crime of Terrorism
    • Trading Spaces: International Law Library Exchanges and Visits
    • Schaffer Grant Recipient Hind Al-Helaly’s AALL presentation and bibliography of Egyptian Legal System resources.

    2005 Annual Meeting (San Antonio, TX)

    • New Vistas and Values for Europe: Strategies for Researching European Law (all-day workshop)
    • Treaty-Making–Really, Part II
    • Mexican Americans and the Law
    • Navigating the Maze of U.S. Treaty Research – Strategies for Finding Treaties, Treaty Actions and Interpretive Materials
    • Researching International Marine Environmental Law plus an International Marine Law Bibliography

    2004 Annual Meeting (Boston, MA)

    • Shopping in the Global Marketplace: Information Sources for International Trade (all-day workshop)
    • Treaty-Making–Really
    • Globalization Moved My Cheese: Or, How Do I Find Foreign Law? – Wenger’s Foreign Law Bibliography
    • A Current Appraisal of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Legal Research
    • The European Union At A Crossroads: Freedoms In A Federated Europe
    • Hijab, Jihad, Riba and Hudud: Islamic Law in the 21st Century
    • Envision New Possibilities for Research Training and Collections for Foreign-Trained Lawyers and International LLM Students

  • 1995 - 2003

    2003 Annual Meeting (Seattle, WA)

    • The Role of the Council of Europe: Envision Constitutional Reform and Human Rights in the Newer Member States
    • Networking to the Future: The CISG Database as a Paradigm of Scholarly Web Publishing
    • All Aboard: Maritime Law: U.S., Canadian and Global Issues
    • Access to American Indian Law Information: Options Today, Envisioning Tomorrow
    • Special Event: The Legal and Political System of Indonesia

    2002 Annual Meeting (Orlando, FL)

    • Devolution in the United Kingdom: A Revolution in Online Legal Research
    • Connecting with the Worldwide Effort to Combat Crimes Against Humanity: The Creation of the International Criminal Court
    • International Law/International Relations Connection – Internationalizing Law Library Connections
    • Government Documents Around the World: Access Policies and Strategies of Disclosure

    2001 Annual Meeting (Minneapolis, MN)

    • The New Reality of a United Germany: German Legal Sources and Research Strategies, pt. 1
    • The New Reality of a United Germany: German Legal Sources and Research Strategies, pt. 2
    • Mastering The Matrix: Teaching with Technology
    • Global Citizens: The Immigration Law Research Challenge
    • New Realities in Data Protection: The Transatlantic Debate (co-sponsored w/ AALL Government Relations Committee)
    • Global Trade: Key WTO Issues and WTO/GATT Research
    • New Realities for Developing Global Collections: New Approaches and Cooperative Projects
    • Prometheus UNBound: ?Firing Up? United Nations Legal Researchers
    • Special Event: BIALL Chair Furlong on the Irish Legal System

    2000 Annual Meeting (Philadelphia, PA)

    • Workshop: Gateway to Treaty Research in the Digital Age
    • Passeport pour la France, pt. 1
    • Passeport pour la France, pt. 2
    • Building New Gateways: Research Instruction for Foreign-Trained Lawyers & Law Students
    • New Look to an Old Subject: Electronic Resources in English Legal Research
    • The Intersection of Public & Private International Law in a Global Economy
    • Gateway to China: Searching & Finding in Chinese
    • Passeport Intellectuel pour la Louisiane et le Quebec

    1999 Annual Meeting (Washington, D.C.)

    • Cuban Legal and Political Systems
    • From Russia with Law: Research in the Laws of the Russian Federation and Newly Independent States
    • Information Policy at the Crossroads: The Challenge of Globalization
    • Keeping Art or Sending it Back
    • Official Gazettes: The Ultimate Source for Foreign Statutes
    • Our Neighbors to the North & South: the Legal Systems of Canada and Mexico
    • The Transatlantic World: The Law from the English Civil War to the Early 18th Century

    1998 Annual Meeting (Anaheim, CA)

    • Approaching the New Horizon: Foreign and International Research Instruction in the Law School and Law Firm
    • Discovering A New Horizon for Government Information Resources: using U.S. Government Publications for International Research
    • Fifty Years after Nuremberg and Tokyo: The Future of International and Domestic Prosecutions of War Crimes
    • The Guiding Principles of the 21st Century: The 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
    • The Information Society: European Union Documents in the United States
    • Co-sponsored Program: Coke’s World: The Law in the Renaissance (Navigating the Law through the Ages Part 2)

    1997 Annual Meeting (Baltimore, MD)

    • International Legal Regimes and their Capture in Classes KZ-JZ: Shifting Boundaries, Changing Traditional Jurisdiction.*
    • The Civil Law Tradition: What It Is, How It Compares to Common Law, and How to Research It.
    • Women in International Law: Rape as a War Crime.
    • Legal Aspects of Returning Cultural Property to Their Original Owners.
    • Supporting Legal Information Needs of Evolving Democracies.
    • Teaching Navigational Skills for Foreign Waters: Foreign and International Research Instruction on the Law School and Law Firm.
    • Co-sponsored PastPrograms:
      • International Legal Regimes: New International Institutions for Conflict Regulation. *
      • Around the World in Eighty Minutes (OBS SIS). *
      • The Next Wave of International Intellectual Property Law: the WIPO, the WTO, and the New Berne Protocol (Copyright Committee). *
      • Navigating the Law through the Ages: the Roots of the Common Law and Civil Law Traditions (Legal History SIS). *

    1996 Annual Meeting (Indianapolis, IN)

    • Human Rights Worldwide: When the Message is Hard to Deliver — Refugees, Women, and Sexual Minorities (three part program).*
    • Doing Business in Africa. *
    • New Developments in French Law.
    • Filtering the Net.
    • Fashion/Style and the Law.
    • Co-sponsored programs:
      • The Global Harmonization of Copyrights Laws (Copyright Committee). *
      • Solving Foreign and International Requests with Sources in Your Library (Reader Services SIS). *
      • Hong Kong 1997 (Asian/American Law Librarians Caucus). *

    1995 Annual Meeting & National Conference on Legal Information Issues (selected programs only) (Pittsburgh, PA)

    • Building the Global Law Library.
    • International Justice: How Courts Worldwide Disseminate Information.
    • Global Lawyers, Global Librarians.
    • A Global Information Superhighway?; The Open Road, Speed Bumps, and Dangerous Curves.
    • Human Rights Resources and Humanitarian Field Organizations: The Hidden Resources (cosponsored with Reader Services SIS).

    * denotes selected programs