Future ILA Biennial Conferences:

73rd Conference, Brazil, 17-21 August 2008
74th Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, 2010
75th Conference, Bulgaria, 2012
76th Conference, Japan, 2014

WELCOME TO THE ABILA.

Click here for our calendar of events

Welcome to the website of the American Branch of the International Law Association (ILA). The ILA was founded in 1873 and is the preeminent international non-governmental organization for developing and restating international law. It draws its members from the entire range of those interested in international law – government, international organizations, practitioners and academics. It has consultative status in the United Nations and plays a unique role in drafting treaties, resolutions and other international instruments. The ILA often influences debates in the UN general assembly and the overall development of public and private international law. The ILA is organized into committees and study groups, with American Branch members. You can get further information about ILA’s work by following the link to its website in the left column of this page.

The ILA’s headquarters are in London, but is organized into over 40 national branches, so it is truly an international law organization. The American Branch is one of the largest. The American Branch has parallel committees that often comment on and shape reports of the international level committees. Those committees also undertake their own projects. To see a range of the committees, both active and in the process of being activated, follow the link to committees in the left margin of this page.

Although the American Branch is a large branch, our lack of bureaucracy provides opportunities for our members to pursue projects of interest to them. In the recent past, those projects have included papers on the development of customary international law, amicus briefs in various cases, and the publication of a book dealing with the terminology of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Members may put together committees of people interested in a particular area of the law, form a committee to pursue that project and conclude that project over several years, sometimes producing published works.

Much of the work of the ILA occurs at its biennial conferences, at which members from all branches interact, almost uniquely among international law organizations, which tend to be national. The most recent ILA conference was in Toronto in 2006. Upcoming conferences will be in Rio de Janiero (2008), The Hague (2010), Bulgaria (2012), and Tokyo (2014). In May of 2007, the ILA accepted the American Branch’s invitation to hold the 2016 conference in the United States, which has not occurred since 1972. In a few years, we will begin preparation for that event.

Likewise, the American Branch puts on significant conferences. Each year, we hold International Law Weekend toward the end of October in New York City, at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. That two-and-a-half day conference features between 30 and 35 panels and a number of significant individual speakers. Every other year, we hold International Law Weekend – West, which began in 2001 in Malibu and has been held in subsequent years in Los Angeles, Costa Mesa and Santa Clara, California. Its next stop is Oregon – Portland or Salem – in 2009. In addition, we are in the process of developing International Law Weekend – Midwest, which we hope to hold in venues such as Chicago and St. Louis. We also hold regional conferences on specialized topics several times a year.

Membership in the American Branch (which automatically makes one a member of the ILA) also brings with it a number of publications – our Newsletter, the International Law Association Newsletter, the American Branch’s Proceedings and the Proceedings of International Law Weekend (published as International Practitioner’s Handbook each year) and of the biennial ILA conferences.

We invite you to consider membership in the American Branch. You can join electronically or by mailing in your application. Information is available in the links at the left of this page. If you have the serious interest in international law, we believe you will find things of value here.

Cordially,

Charles Siegal
President