CYIL Vol. 5, 2014

PREFACE

Dear Readers, You now have in your hands the fifth volume of the Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law (CYIL), appearing, as usual, in October. This means that our Czech Yearbook celebrates its fifth anniversary. While in human life such an anniversary indicates that a child has almost reached school age, for the journal it means an indisputable tradition. This Czech Yearbook is a scholarly publication of the Czech Society of International Law, acting in cooperation with the Czech Branch of the International Law Association. The above institutions and the Editorial Board of the CYIL are proud that, despite its rather complicated start in life, the Yearbook has not only survived but is growing and maturing. This anniversary is a good occasion to announce some news. As you know, the CSIL publishes the Yearbook both in printed and electronic versions (www.cyil.eu). Beginning with the third volume (2012), we have offered the electronic version in a user-friendly format of an E-book, suitable for PCs, notebooks and tablets. Since 2014, the Czech Yearbook has been included in the Czech index of scholarly peer- reviewed journals (RVVI) and is currently being indexed for the SCOPUS database. We will inform you about the results on our web site. Next, beginning with this current volume, the Czech Yearbook is being published by the new international publishing project, RW&W Passau-Berlin-Praha, and will be distributed through the company Südost Service GmbH abroad, mostly in Germany. The newly established partnership of RW&W with partners in scientific publishing should ensure a place for the Czech Yearbook in catalogues and databases among other international legal journals and books. However, the content is and must be, in our opinion, just as important as form, if not even more important. From this point of view, Volume 5 (2014) keeps the standards set in previous volumes. The variety of studies and articles in this volume covers many issues of contemporary International and European law. They include, inter alia , non-traditional norms of international law, R2P, the definition of aggression, an issue of emerging legal regime of Arctic, nuclear liability and protection of natural species under CITES. This volume also offers a thematic section with three articles on Diplomatic protection. The editors would like to continue this model in the next years. The current developments seem to offer many issues, for example the lightness of international sanctions, which incite extensive public debate. It is interesting, however, that real international law analysis of such sanctions, from the point of view of legal rules on State responsibility and countermeasures, is absent so far. Let us debate!