Oh Là Là! Recueil des Cours Online

The Goodson Law Library now provides campus-wide electronic access to the complete set of the Recueil des Cours (Collected Courses of the Hague Academy) through HeinOnline. Previously, Duke users needed to consult the print set in the library’s Periodicals collection and had electronic access to only a small subset of the publication (1923-1937) through the Gallica Periodicals database.

The Hague Academy is a major research center for the study and teaching of international law, and its “Collected Courses” (Recueil des Cours) are drawn from its famous summer class series. Top international law scholars visit the academy to deliver lectures on public and private international law topics, which are then published in a volume of the Recueil des Cours. Each volume contains the courses for that year, in the language in which they were delivered (generally, either French or English). To locate Collected Courses on a particular topic, the individual courses are indexed in the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, and in a browseable and searchable bibliography on the Peace Palace website. The full text of the collection may also be searched within HeinOnline.

The Hein library includes the complete full text of the Recueil des Cours from 1923 forward in PDF, indexes from 1967 forward, and a separate collection of “Law Books of the Academy,” many of which reprint the materials from separate academy workshops. See the full list of library contents on Hein’s website or browse the collection yourself in HeinOnline.

For more resources to aid your international law research, consult the library’s Foreign & International Law Research Guides or Ask a Librarian.