The History Of American Student-Edited International Law Journals

Harlan Grant Cohen (Fordham; Google Scholar), A Short History of the Early History of American Student-Edited International Law Journals, 64 Va. J. Int'l L. 357 (2024):

While to some the “invisible college of international lawyers” may invoke images of open spaces between buildings and airy quads, to others the picture will be something much more clubbish and cloistered. And at least at their start, American student-edited international law journals decidedly resembled the latter. The Harvard International Law Journal began as the Bulletin of the Harvard International Law Club. Its first issue in 1959 detailed the club’s lectures and events, including a sherry party and membership growth from thirteen to thirty-three. “The principal function of the Club [was] the sponsorship of talks both by men actively engaged in the field of international law and by graduate students of the Harvard Law School.” (Its first two editors were future Boston College Law Professor Charles Baron and Wilmot Reed Hastings, a future Nixon administration lawyer whose son would co-found Netflix.) 

The first Bulletin also included some notes from recent Club alumni, detailing new jobs and babies. Young alumni writing in included future Panamanian diplomat Carlos Alfredo Lopez-Guevara, future Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Krzysztof Skubiszewski, future member of the United Nations International Law Commission and Iran-United States Claims Tribunal George H. Aldrich, and future Deputy Premier of Quebec Jacques-Yvan Morin. The second issue included a comprehensive Club alumni directory.

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