The North Carolina Journal of International Law (ILJ) is a student-run law journal at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Now in its 41st year of publication, ILJ is dedicated to stimulating the intellectual climate through legal scholarship in the area of international and foreign law. It is the second-oldest law journal at the University of North Carolina behind North Carolina Law Review. ILJ ranks third among thirty-four journals worldwide in the field of international trade law and thirty-ninth among 207 in the more general field of international law. In 2015, it shortened its name from "The North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation" in part to reflect the expansion from its original focus of commercial regulation.
Contents
ILJ publishes four issues each year featuring articles written by leading scholars, respected practitioners, and ILJ staff members. In 2015, it added a fifth, online-only issue.
Journal Symposiums
In order to foster discussion of international legal issues, ILJ also hosts an annual symposium that brings together the legal community for academic and public discourse on an important issue in international law. Its January 2015 symposium addressed the role of foreign law in U.S. federal and state courts, ranging from new applications of comity, a long-standing principle under which U.S. courts recognize valid foreign judgments, to the rare but growing practice of U.S. courts citing foreign law as persuasive, a practice which is most closely associated with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and which has generated a degree of controversy. ILJ's January 2016 symposium is expected to address the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of Child Abduction.
Blog Posts
ILJ regularly publishes blog posts on current events and issues in international law, including international arbitration and commercial regulation.