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Treaty Terminology

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I’m in the middle of revamping an instruction session on finding tax treaties worldwide. Since most people aren’t very familiar with treaties/international agreements, I include a review/clarification of some key treaty-related terms. To help me out with this, I’ve been relying on the United Nations Treaty Reference Guide. It defines in great detail key treaty-related terminology (parties vs contracting states, treaty vs agreement vs convention, etc). It also defines terms related to treaty actions (adoption, ratification, entry into force, etc).

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  1. Simon Fodden
    August 24th, 2006 at 4:30 pm

    Welcome, Agnese. Great first post. I’m looking forward to many more.

  2. Simon C
    August 24th, 2006 at 6:29 pm

    I always start with the Vienna Convention, on the Law of Treaties .
    I also use the Fletcher Multilaterals Project , which is good for multilateral instruments
    I hope you’ll tell us where the UN service falls down and what the weaknesses of the CTS series are
    Dupras is useful on what Canada actually does in both French and English to supplement the dangerous dated works by Allan Gotlieb, Canadian treaty-making, and Anne-Marie Jacomy-Millette, L’introduction et l’application des traités internationaux au Canada. Yes that Allan Gotlieb, then of Wadham College and External, now consigliere to the universe.
    And of course those of us with long memories remember that Professor Hugh Lawford started QL with this aim. As Jon Bing put it in an OECD paper:

    The major example may be Hugh Lawford’s initiative at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. Since 1961, the university has been engaged in a Treaty Project, collecting and annotating the treaties of the British Commonwealth. In 1967, word processing was introduced. The Treaty Project has been used in preparing the treaties of a number of developing countries. In 1968, the Queen’s University Institute for Computers and Law (QUIC/IAW) was funded based on this project. The initiative is basic to what is today known as QL Systems Ltd, a computer and communication service offering legal information services for the whole of Canada. The initial relation to the Treaty Project has not, however, led to an emphasis on international legal instruments.