Transparency in International Law

While its importance in domestic law has long been acknowledged, transparency has until now remained largely unexplored in international law. This study of transparency issues in key areas such as international economic law, environmental law, human rights law and humanitarian law brings together new and important insights on this pressing issue. Contributors explore the framing and content of transparency in their respective fields with regard to proceedings, institutions, law-making processes and legal culture, and a selection of cross-cutting essays completes the study by examining transparency in international law-making and adjudication.

'… how much transparency can the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sustain in humanitarian work, how much secrecy is indispensable? … How much secrecy does warfare need? This volume is full of these kinds of questions, and awakens the reader's curiosity, and leaves him or her at once enlightened and captivated by new questions and puzzles. Could one express higher praise for an academic book?' Ulrich K. Preuß, International Journal of Constitutional Law, 'Transparency in International Law represents the most comprehensive effort to date to systematise and make intelligible the concept for all international lawyers. In that regard, it has been successful: besides being comprehensive, the book is unified by the very openness through which its contributors have engaged with the concept of transparency, an approach that has allowed each chapter to be highly concept-specific without detracting from the overall aim of the volume.' Gleider I. Hernández, The Journal of World Investment and Trade, 'Unlike many edited books, which may vary both in focus and in the quality of the different contributions, this volume showcases highly qualified authors throughout its pages. The introduction and conclusions by Bianchi and Peters encapsulate and expand the thoughts expressed in the substantive chapters … The editors have given us new and important insights in the value and function of transparency in international legal cooperation. … they have succeeded in placing transparency on the agenda for international law research.' Geir Ulfstein, American Journal of International Law, .

Andrea Bianchi is a Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. Anne Peters is Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and Professor of International Law and Constitutional Law at the University of Basel, Switzerland.