By: Austin Williams & Kathleen Claussen, Georgetown Law
The Study and Analysis of International Law Scholarship (SAILS) Consortium is a unique interdisciplinary collaborative research project that brings together scholars from international and comparative law to study the relationship between international law scholarship and practice. Established in 2021, the project intends to bring together librarians, clinicians, and doctrinal experts from law schools around the world. With more than 40 participants on several continents, SAILS commissions and hosts research and events of relevance to the international law community. SAILS is actively looking for librarians that would like to contribute to the project as authors or co-authors.
SAILS participants are committed to examining how international law journals, textbooks, and other scholarly materials have influenced the ways in which both scholars and practitioners inside and outside of the field think about international law. Many legal scholars, and some practitioners, treat international law as exceptional among doctrines and canons, and some even suggest that international law is not properly law. In the United States, and to some degree elsewhere, international law scholarship is likewise set apart from domestic law scholarship, reinforcing this bifurcation and international law exceptionalism, likely to the detriment of both fields. Little work has been done to analyze how international, comparative, and foreign relations law research and publications are influencing the practice of international law, and even less has been done with special attention to what areas, regions, and individuals are left out.
The first SAILS meeting was held in 2022 and was attended by participants from Cornell University, Duke University, Harvard University, King’s College London, Oxford University, Rutgers University, the University of Arizona, the University of California – Hastings, the University of California – Los Angeles, the University of Georgia, the University of Miami, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin, and Yale University. That exploratory session led to a preliminary research agenda to which many more scholars have contributed. Since the first meeting, SAILS has held a number of scholarly workshops, the next of which will be held at Singapore Management University in December 2025. For detailed information regarding each event, see Events on the SAILS website.
Some SAILS projects have sought to address the following:
- what topics are covered by international law scholarship, and what topics are left out;
- the geographic and educational backgrounds of authors, and communities that may be missing;
- reliance on international law publications by the practice community, or lack thereof;
- the appearance or absence of international law in mainstream law journals;
- the place of language, and emphasis on English in international law scholarship, especially with respect to accessibility to the non-English-speaking world;
- new developments in technology influencing international law research;
- the impact of professional networks on publication trends and citations;
- disparities in gender and race in international law scholarship;
- the history of international law journals – peer-reviewed and student-edited;
- how research funding has an impact on what gets published, read, and cited;
- the rise and/or fall of comparative law scholarship and its significance;
- access to research and scholarly databases within the developing world;
- the intersections between international law, international relations, and political science, among other social science sibling fields; and,
- the prevalence or deficiency of interdisciplinary research networks and professional gatherings.
As part of SAILS 2024 Symposium, the Georgetown Journal of International Law (GJIL), the Virginia Journal of International Law (VJIL), and the Yale Journal of International Law (YJIL) jointly published nine essays within their individual issues. The impact of SAILS has been to inform publication bodies and scholars across the legal community as to the gaps in our scholarship, unanticipated repercussions of our publishing practices, and areas for engagement with domestic law scholars to promote international law as law, as well as to create pathways for further legal development within international law. The work commissioned by SAILS examines and analyzes how international, comparative, and foreign relations law journals, and other publications, have shaped the practice and teaching of international law.
SAILS also maintains a SAILS Bibliography that serves as a dynamic list of resources of relevance to the project. All are welcome and encouraged to submit suggestions for additional articles and books to add to this bibliography.
For more information about SAILS, please go to the SAILS website or contact the SAILS administrative team at sails@georgetown.edu.
This Blog contains entries by members of the International Association of Law Libraries on issues germane to the Association’s areas of focus. Views expressed in an individual entry only represent the views of the author, and not those of the International Association of Law Libraries or the author’s employer.