Leiden Journal of International Law

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A. General

1. Editorial Policy

Firmly established as one of the leading journals in the field, the Leiden Journal of International Law (LJIL) provides a venue for sharp and critical voices that speak on the theory and practice of international law. It aspires to introduce or amplify refreshing and innovative approaches to perennial as well as topical issues in the field. The Journal’s focus rests on international legal theory, international law and practice, international criminal law, as well as international courts and tribunals.

2. Submissions

All material submitted must be original. Submissions to LJIL must be exclusive. LJIL does not evaluate papers that are scheduled for publication or are currently under review elsewhere.

Only articles which fall within the scope of the Journal, as formulated above, will be considered for publication and submitted to the review procedure. A request to submit a contribution to the LJIL is not a guarantee that the contribution will be published.

Articles accepted are usually between 8,000-14,000 words.

LJIL has a double blind review procedure, and hence all submissions should exclude any information that explicitly or implicitly identifies the authors.

All submissions should be written in good English (UK spelling preferred), and should follow LJIL’s points of style and rules of citation, as formulated below. Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the editor and any reviewers. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate: www.cambridge.org/academic/author-services/

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge published journal.

In addition, there are the following requirements to submitted texts:

Double-space the text and use a font no smaller than twelve points; number the pages consecutively.
Include an abstract of maximum 250 words and 5 key words.
Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the Journal but it must be clear that colour is needed to enhance the meaning of the figure, rather than simply being for aesthetic purposes. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
Ensure that the submission is anonymous. This means that in this version you should not thank colleagues in notes or elsewhere in the body of the paper or mention institution names, web page addresses, or other potentially identifying information. Citations to previous work by the author should not be made so as to identify the author.

Articles for LJIL should be submitted through the ScholarOne system, by logging into: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ljil.

In case an author is invited to revise and resubmit, s/he is asked to provide an accompanying letter in which s/he explains both what revisions have been made to the original article, as well as, if applicable, where and why the author disagreed with the suggestions by the reviewer.

Please visit www.cambridge.org/core/services/open-access-policies for information on our open access policies, compliance with major funding bodies, and guidelines on depositing your manuscript in an institutional repository.

Per section, the following specific requirements apply:

International Legal Theory

In order to be considered for the International Legal Theory (ILT) section, papers should specifically engage with and contribute to discussions within international legal and/or political theory, or provide a refreshing and innovative conceptual approach of a question of international law.

International Law & Practice

In order to be considered for the International Law & Practice (IL&P) section, papers should specifically and primarily deal with a current development in international law. IL&P articles should provide an utterly original approach, offering a real addition to existing literature and case-law on the subject.

Hague International Tribunals

ICJ

In order to be considered for the ICJ section, papers can address all aspects of the International Court of Justice and its work (institutional, procedural, substantive, etc). The submission of case-notes is discouraged.

ICTY

In order to be considered for the ICTY section, papers can discuss case law of the ad hoc international tribunals (ICTY and ICTR) and the internationalized tribunals and courts (e.g., the SCSL and STL). The papers ideally provide the reader with an innovative and comparative law perspective and profess a scholarly approach. Papers on national adjudication of international crimes can also be published in this section as long as such papers build on case law produced by the ICTY or other internationalized courts and tribunals. The submission of case-notes that merely discuss and refer to case law of the international courts and tribunals is discouraged.

ICC

In order to be considered for the ICC section, papers can engage in an in-depth and original analysis of the law and practice of the ICC, including court policies, situations and cases and their context. This section is open to comparative research, interdisciplinary analysis and input from other disciplines on core themes of international criminal justice. Contributions should make a certain claim or argument (rather than presenting cases, laws or procedures). The submission of case-notes is discouraged.

Book reviews and essays

The book reviews and essays section welcomes reviews of books that cover one of LJIL’s areas of interest, in particular, though not limited to, international legal theory and international dispute settlement. The section publishes two types of book-reviews:

Regular book-reviews (approximately 1,500-2,000 words) which briefly and objectively present an individual text. Book-reviews should be thorough and analytical, and provide more than a mere reproduction of the table of contents.
Review-essays (approximately 5,000-8,000 words) which are more extensive and argumentative contributions. These discuss one or more book(s) in the context of a common/overarching theme and/or the existing scholarship on the topic.

All book-reviews and review-essays are subject to the standard LJIL review process. The section does not send books to unsolicited reviewers.

3. Procedure

After the article is received, the editors will decide whether or not to send it out for review. LJIL works with a double blind review procedure. On the basis of the review reports, the author might be invited to revise and resubmit the article on the basis of the comments by our expert reviewers.

On acceptance of the paper the contributor will be asked to complete an exclusive licence to publish form. Typographical or factual errors only may be changed at proof stage. The publisher reserves the right to charge authors for correction of non-typographical errors.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any materials, including photographs and illustrations for which they do not hold copyright in both print and electronic formats and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in the manuscript.

4. Proofs and offprints

Authors of articles, review essays and book reviews will receive a PDF file of their contribution and a complimentary issue upon publication. Offprints can be purchased if the form is completed and returned to the publisher on receipt of the first proofs.

5. Contact

Please direct any questions to the managing editor at:

Managing Editor
Leiden Journal of International Law
P.O. Box 13228
2501 EE The Hague
The Netherlands
E: LJIL@law.leidenuniv.nl
T: +31 (0)70 800 9518

B. Points of style

1. Main text

Subsections

An article may be divided into sections, subsections, and sub-subsections, using Arabic numerals. Only the initial word and proper names in words should be capitalized. The LJIL uses the following heading levels:

Example:

1. UN peace-keeping operations
1.1. Introduction
1.1.1. East Timor

Punctuation

Punctuation should be consistent in the following ways:

single quotation marks should be used, except for quotations within quotations (which will have double quotation marks) and extracts broken off from the text (which will be set off from the text with no quotation marks);
punctuation will follow closing inverted commas except for grammatically complete sentences beginning with a capital – e.g. He maintained: ‘The book under discussion breaks new ground.’
The serial comma (i.e. the one before ‘and’ in ‘red, white, and blue’) is used.

Quotations

Quotations of fewer than 40 words are to be included in the main text, between single quotation marks. Longer quotations should begin on a new line, without quotation marks, and be indented from the left to indicate that it is to be set as a separate block of text.

Style: The original capitalization, spelling etc. of the quotation should be preserved. Place any change made to a quoted text between square brackets. Where you use an ellipsis to indicate omissions within the quoted text, do not enclose it in square brackets ([…), unless the quoted author also uses an ellipsis. Use ‘sic’ between square brackets to signify obvious mistakes in the quoted text. If you wish to add specific emphasis to part of the quoted text, this should be done by the use of italics, and ‘(emphasis added)’ should be added to the source note. Quotations should always be followed by a footnote with a reference to the source.

Lists

Numbered lists: use Arabic numbers followed by a full point. Separate each part with a semi-colon, ending the last one with a full point, and adding ‘and’ after the last semi-colon.

Example:

Certain rights are specifically designed for the protection of minorities:
1. the right to non-discrimination;
2. the right of preservation of identity;
3. the right to strike; and
4. the right to establish and maintain institutions.

No ordinary unnumbered lists should have bullets, and that where necessary, for clarity, sub lists should start with a dash.

Listed items within a sentence: where these consist of more than single words or phrases, they should be separated by a semi-colon, e.g., ‘Head of Research, T.M.C. Asser Institute, The Hague, The Netherlands; CEO, Shell; General Editor, Banking News; and Professor of Economic Law, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands.’ Use lower-case roman numerals in parentheses for a numbered list.

Italics

Italics should be used sparingly. Only the following should be italicized in the main text:

Case names (but not ‘v.’) and all procedural phases (in re, ex parte): Corfu Channel case
Titles of publications: Wall Street Journal, Yale Law Journal, International Institutional Law
Words requiring special emphasis: ‘never use bold type’ Words or phrases in languages other than English which are not in common use

Important: Full quotations in a foreign language are not italicized (and a translation should be provided in a footnote).

Abbreviations

Abbreviations that are in common use (UN, EC, EU, US, NATO) need not be given in full on first use. Other abbreviations should be spelt out on first use with the abbreviation given immediately following in parentheses, e.g. ‘World Health Organization (WHO)’. However, do not use an abbreviation if the name in question is only mentioned a few times – always give it in full.

Acronyms and lettered abbreviations will be rendered with no stops.

Terms such as ‘article’, ‘resolution’, ‘paragraph’, and ‘declaration’ should not be abbreviated (unless they are given in footnotes, see below). Paragraph numbers of articles should be given in parentheses, e.g. ‘Article 5(6b)’; ‘Article XII(1)’.

Numbers

Numerals will be written out up to and including ten; 11 and above will be given in figures.

Number spans are elided to the shortest pronounceable form, so 375–6, not 375–76 or 375–376 (but 317–18).

Dates

Use the form day–month–year, e.g. 2 November 2002.

Decades: always use ‘1960s’, not ‘sixties’ or ‘60s’. Centuries are spelt out.

Capitalization

Avoid capitalization as much as possible – when they are used generically do not capitalize such words or phrases as ‘state’, ‘state parties’, ‘members’, ‘contracting parties’, ‘treaty’, and so on.

Courts, tribunal chambers and personnel: capitalize specific chambers, such as ‘Appeals Chamber’, ‘Trial Chamber I’, a generic term such as ‘trial chamber’ should not be capitalized. Where the formal functions of the Office of the Prosecutor are being discussed, then ‘Prosecutor’ should be capitalized, but it should not be when the term is used generically. Similarly, ‘defence’, ‘defendant’, ‘accused’, ‘applicant’, ‘respondent’, ‘judge’, and so on should not be capitalized. When a reference is made to the contracting parties of GATT as a body, leave capitalization the way the author has indicated.

The following should always be capitalized: ‘article’, ‘chapter’, and ‘section’, when followed by a number, and ‘resolution’, ‘treaty’, ‘draft’, etc. when referring to a specific text.

Spelling, miscellaneous

Please note that the following should be used:

First World War, Second World War, not World War I, World War II
‘jus’, not ‘ius’ (except where the latter is given in a quotation)
-ize endings, but ‘analyse’
third world (noun), third-world (adjective) G7, etc.
fora
co-operation, co-ordination etc.
2 bis, ter etc.

2. Footnotes

Abbreviations

The following should always be abbreviated in footnotes:

Annex(es): Ann.
Appendix(-ices): App.; Apps.
Article(s): Art.; Arts.
Paragraph(s): Para.; Paras.
Decision(s): Dec.; Decs.
Regulation(s): Regs.
Resolution(s): Res.

Page references

Never use p. or pp. (this is only used in the main text of Book Reviews).

Use ‘at’ if the page number may be confused with another part of the citation.

Cross-references

The first reference to any source must be given in full (for format see ‘Rules for citation’ below).
Authorities and textual sources cited elsewhere in the article may be referred to by using a condensed reference, adding ‘supra’ or ‘infra’. This also applies to case names.
For a reference to the author, simply use the last name (no initials). Where two authors are cited give both names, but for three or more name only the first author, followed by ‘et al.’.
Use ‘note’ or ‘notes’ when referring to other footnotes within the article.
Do not use page numbers for references within an article, as they will change when the issue is typeset. Instead, refer to (sub)sections or text at notes.
References such as ‘op. cit.’, ‘loc. cit.’, ‘idem’ (‘id.’) are not used; only ‘ibid.’ should be used, when referring to the source cited immediately above.

Examples:

See Falk, supra note 17, at 86.

See Western Sahara case, supra note 20, at 12. Ibid., at 24.

Cf. Section 5, infra. See note 10, infra.