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Cristina Verones and Sébastien Rosselet , The Public International Law Study Guide for Students: Exercises and Answers , Oxford and Portland , Oregon, Hart Publishing , 2013, 474 pp., ISBN13 9781849464543 , £19.99/$40.00
BOOK REVIEWS
* Meijers PhD Fellow and Lecturer, Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University [
].
The Public International Law Study Guide for Students: Exercises and Answers is the result of a new and welcome initiative: to the best of this reviewer's knowledge, it is the first compilation of public international law exercises to be published. As such, anyone who teaches international law is bound to be intrigued when taking it into their hands for the first time.
The book delivers exactly what the title promises: it is a collection of hypothetical cases, waiting to be solved by applying the relevant principles and rules of public international law, along with extensive model answers provided for each of them. The focus is on general international law, spanning issues from treaty law through state responsibility to the use of force, with the last chapter dedicated to specialized fields, such as human rights.
The study guide is a response to an age-old problem: namely, that the greatest difficulty lies not in learning the rules, but in applying them, by presenting well-reasoned arguments in a clearly articulated way. Accordingly, the book serves a dual purpose: to help students learn how to apply abstract legal rules to a particular set of facts, and to improve their writing and reasoning skills in the process. Both of these aims are heavily emphasized throughout the introductory sections; it is explicitly recommended that when practicing, students should provide 'thorough reasoning rather than just a few bullet points as an answer' (p. 2). In line with this approach, the answers to all the exercises are given in a detailed essay format, just as they would be expected in an exam. They methodically go through the identification of applicable law, followed by its application to the concrete facts at hand (each legal problem addressed separately), and always end with a brief conclusion. In fact, the essays are so meticulous that they even come with the caveat that students may not necessarily be expected to...