Members of the Texas International Law Journal (TILJ) would like to thank you for your interest in our Journal.¹ In the rapidly expanding field of international law, it is important to stay abreast of recent developments and to have access to cutting-edge legal analysis. As an editorial staff, we seek to fulfill these needs by concentrating on groundbreaking articles that will be useful to both practitioners and scholars in our field. We hope you enjoy the current issue.

The Journal is one of the oldest and best established student-published international law journals in the United States. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster and the Cuban Missile Crisis, our publication began as an offshoot of the Texas International Law Society.² In January 1965, under the guidance of Professor E. Ernest Goldstein, we planted the Texas flag in the international arena with our first issue entitled The Journal of the University of Texas International Law Society. Publications thereafter were biannual, taking the name Texas International Law Forum until Vol. 7 No. 1, Summer 1971, when the Journal adopted its present title and became a triannual publication. Of the more than forty-five student-published international law journals across the country, only three schools have an older international heritage: Harvard, Columbia, and Virginia.

Over the years, Journal staff have made the most of our established position. We have developed an excellent reputation by forging close ties with numerous scholars and authors worldwide. Subsequently, we receive over 500 unsolicited manuscripts each year and are quite selective in our publication choices. This heritage has helped us develop one of the largest subscriptions and circulations of any student-published international law journal. Subscribers to the Journal number well over 500. They include law schools, government entities, law firms, corporations, embassies, international organizations, and individuals from virtually every state in the Union and more than forty-five foreign countries.

Journal manuscripts continue to attract widespread attention. Courts at all levels, including the Supreme Court of the United States, have cited Journal publications as judicial authority.³ Numerous scholarly works regularly comment on our articles in their analyses. Many of our editions include unique topics solicited for special purposes, such as our annual symposium issue, which focuses on newly emerging legal concerns in the international community.⁴ As such, publishers routinely request reprint authorizations seeking to use our articles in forthcoming books. Incidentally, both of the leading on-line legal resource services - Westlaw and Lexis - carry our most current volumes as well as a majority of our back-issues.

With over 20 board members and 70 staff members, TILJ maintains a refined and well-organized editing process. Please know that our publishing team has once again put in the extra effort to make the latest issue a publication worth reading. As nations forge closer ties with the coming millenium, we are confident that the Journal will continue to provide a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of international law.

The Honorable Justice William O. Douglas, former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; W. Page Keeton, former Dean of the University of Texas School of Law; Thomas Buergenthal, former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; Charles Alan Wright, Professor of Law at the University of Texas, co-author of the leading treatise on Federal Practice and Procedure, and President of the American Law Institute; Louis Henkin, President of the American Society of International Law, Chief Reporter of the Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States, and Editor in Chief of the American Journal of International Law; and The Honorable Justice Richard J. Goldstone, Member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Robert Reich, former United States Secretary of Labor, former Professor of Government and Public Policy at Harvard University, and former Director of Public Policy for the Federal Trade Commission; Joseph Jove, former United States Ambassador to Mexico; Andreas Lowenfeld, New York University Law professor, and leading international law scholar; Dean Rusk, United States Secretary of State under President Johnson; Ewell "Pat" Murphy, former Chairman of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association and respected practicing attorney in the field of international business transactions; Walter S. Surrey, former Chairman of the National Council for U.S.-China Trade and former President of the American Society of International Law.

John A. Barrett of Fulbright & Jaworski; Jacob Dolinger, Professor of Private International Law at the University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Francesco Francioni, Professor of Law at Universita Degli Studi Di Siena, Siena, Italy and visiting professor to the University of Texas; E. Ernest Goldstein, Founder of the Journal, formerly with Coudert Brothers; Ewell "Pat" Murphy, formerly of Baker & Botts; Jonathan Pratter, Foreign Law Librarian at the University of Texas; Steven R. Ratner, Professor of Law at the University of Texas and legal advisor to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the Hague, Netherlands; Robert Rendell, Chairman of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association (1986–87) and head of the International Section at Vial, Hamilton, Koch & Knox in Dallas, Texas; Anne-Marie Slaughter, Professor of Law at Harvard University; and Jay L. Westbrook, Professor of Law at the University of Texas.

Footnotes:

1. Please direct all inquiries to the Texas International Law Journal, University of Texas at Austin, 727 E. Dean Keeton Street, Austin, Texas, USA 78705, Tel: 512-232-1277 Fax: 512-471-6988.
2. See E. Ernest Goldstein, Thank You Fidel! Or How the International Law Society and the Texas International Law Journal Were Born, 30 TEX. INT'L L. J. 223 (1995).
3. The United States Supreme Court, in an opinion by The Honorable Justice Brennan, cited a student-written Comment from the Journal in the landmark state unitary tax case, Container Corporation of America v. Franchise Tax Board, 103 S.Ct. 2933 (1983). More recently, the late Justice Thurgood Marshall's opinion for the unanimous Court in Eastern Airlines, Inc. v. Floyd, 499 U.S. 530 (1991), quoted from Gregory C. Sisk's article, Recovery for Emotional Distress Under the Warsaw Convention: The Elusive Search for the French Legal Meaning of Lésion Corporelle, 25 TEX. INT'L L. J. 127 (1990). Many lower courts have referred to our articles as well.
4. Journal members choose symposium topics with a keen eye towards current events. Recent Symposia have brought together experts from China, Canada, Latin America, Switzerland, and the European Union. Past symposia have frequently led to important developments in the formation of international law. Immediately following our 1996 Symposium on Sustainable Development in Latin American Rainforests, some of the guests formulated a draft convention on rainforest protection.