CYIL 2010

PREFACE

Dear Readers, The Czech Society of International Law, acting in cooperation with the Czech Branch of the International Law Association, presents a new periodical publication focused on International Law. After 40 years from the end of the former Czechoslovak Journal of International Law and almost 20 years from the suspension of publication of Studies in International Law (both periodicals in Czech and Slovak languages), Czech and foreign specialized readers will finally have the new Czech Yearbook of International Law, this time published in English. The first periodical publication (Journal) was banned for political reasons in the early years of the so-called normalization after the end of the Prague Spring of 1968. The second one (Studies) was suspended due to the financial crisis of the old pub lishing houses in the beginning of the economic transformation in the early 1990s. The new Yearbook is an ambitious project, as it aims at maintaining a high scholarly quality of the old Czech periodicals in new, different and quickly changing condi tions of the market of International Law publications today. New challenges require new approaches. In view of the genuinely transnational character of the international law doctrine, a better access to foreign publications than it was in the past as well as the role of new technologies (such as Internet), the new Yearbook must be as open as possible. This warrants the use of the English as a contemporary lingua franca of both scholars and practitioners in International Law and the parallel publication of the printed and electronic version of CYIL (www.cyil.eu). We firmly believe that the Czech doctrine deserves such a kind of publications. To some extent it seems paradoxical that in spite of a big and ever growing number of law journals published in the Czech Republic there has not yet been established a specialized journal or yearbook of International Law in the meaning of term used abroad. We present our Yearbook as a publication focused on International Law, in a sense of Public International Law. Our ambition is to place the new Czech Yearbook among well established yearbooks published abroad. Therefore the struc ture and content of CYIL should follow this model. Having said this, I have to add that this primary focus does not prevent our Yearbook from accepting and publishing also some interesting articles on Private International Law and EU Law. While the Czech Yearbook is to serve first of all for Czech and Slovak authors as a new and more efficient platform for presentation and exchange of views, it is and will be also open for foreign contributions. This Yearbook is a project of the Czech Society of International Law, providing thus a wide platform for members and non-members, scholars and practitioners, Czechs and foreign guests. Already authors of the first volume as well as the Editorial and Scientific Boards show clearly that this project found support of the leading Czech institutions, such as Faculties of Law of the Charles University in Prague, the University Palacky in Olomouc, the

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