The International Lawyer: A Truly Global Law Review

• Author: Werner F. Ebke
• Position: Professor Dr. iur. Dr. rer. pol. h.c., Dr. iur. h.c. Werner F. Ebke, LL.M. (UC Berkeley), is the Chaired Professor of Civil Law, German, European and International Corporate Law and Executive Director of the Institute of German and European Corporate and Business Law, University of Heidelberg Faculty of Law. From 1983 to 1988, Professor Ebke...
• Pages: 17-18

The International Lawyer: A Truly Global Law

Review

W

ERNER

F. E

BKE

*

The International Lawyer – these three words stand for an outstanding,

truly global law review. The International Lawyer is the official publication of

the American Bar Association’s Section of International Law. Prior to 2013,

it was a quarterly publication that included a special Year in Review issue,

which is now a separate annual publication known as The Year in Review.

The ABA published the inaugural issue of The International Lawyer in 1966.

In 1986, Professor Joseph Jude Norton brought The International Lawyer to

the campus of the Southern Methodist University School of Law in Dallas,

Texas. Joe and I had worked out the presentation for the ABA International

Law Section and made our case at an annual meeting of the ABA Section of

International Law in Washington, D.C. Our growth-oriented, international

concept, it seems, convinced the ABA International Law Section. SMU

became the proud home of The International Lawyer and has been ever since.

Joe became the Editor-in-Chief in the forming years and asked me to serve

as Associate Editor, a great honor for me as a young SMU assistant law

professor which I accepted with great pleasure.

Since then, The International Lawyer has grown to become the most widely

distributed U.S. international law review in the world, enjoying

subscriptions of approximately 22,000 readers in more than 90 countries.

The global success of The International Lawyer is closely affiliated with the

process of globalization, the functioning of which is aptly illustrated by the

American author John Naisbitt in his book Megatrends (1982) and the

scholarly foundations of which were laid down by the German immigrant

and former professor at the Harvard Business School Theodore Levitt in his

famous article The Globalization of Markets in the 1983 Harvard Business

Review. Globalization has affected almost all aspects of the cross-border

exchange of goods and services, capital transfers, current international

payments, international activities of (“transnational”) corporations and, last

but not least, the employment market and the market for public goods. As a

result, national legislatures, supranational economic and political unions

(e.g., European Union) or associations (e.g., NAFTA), and international

* Professor Dr. iur. Dr. rer. pol. h.c., Dr. iur. h.c. Werner F. Ebke, LL.M. (UC Berkeley), is

the Chaired Professor of Civil Law, German, European and International Corporate Law and

Executive Director of the Institute of German and European Corporate and Business Law,

University of Heidelberg Faculty of Law. From 1983 to 1988, Professor Ebke taught at the

SMU School of Law. From 1986 through 1999, he served as Associate Editor of The

International Lawyer.

THE INTERNATIONAL LAWYER

A TRIANNUAL PUBLICATION OF THE ABA/SECTION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH

SMU DEDMAN SCHOOL OF LAW