a. The set generally:

[Please note that the following description applies to both volumes in the 2010 Yearbook, not solely to Volume II.]

The Global Community Yearbook is a one-stop resource for all researchers studying international law generally or international criminal tribunals specifically. The Global Community Yearbook appears annually in two-volume editions of carefully chosen primary source material and corresponding expert commentary. The general editor, Professor Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo, employs her vast expertise in international law to select excerpts from important court opinions and also to choose experts from around the world who contribute essay-guides to illuminate those cases. Although the main focus is recent case law from the major international tribunals and regional courts, the first volume of each year's edition always features expert articles by renowned scholars who address broader themes in international law, themes that appear throughout the case law of the many courts covered by the series as a whole.

b. This particular edition (2010):

Beginning with the 2010 edition, the Yearbook will include the new section, Forum-Jurisprudential Cross-Fertilization: An Annual Overview. This section aims to compare and analyze the interconnections between the decisions of international courts and tribunals, as a way of exploring and examining judicial dialogue and the development of common legal principles and concepts in all branches of international law.

The Yearbook is the first academic journal to present an annual overview of the process of jurisprudential cross-fertilization between the courts, based on the drafting and systematic classification of legal maxims (i.e. points of law decided by various international courts) in the section entitled Decisions of International Courts and Tribunals. A comprehensive and complete survey by eminent international law scholars exploring, evaluating and documenting this process has the potential to enhance our contribution and thus further guide our understanding of how to reduce conflicts and create an effective exchange of legal reasoning between different courts. The aim is to promote a favorable environment for the courts to advance the process of judicial cooperation with a view to the possible harmonization of legal principles governing the global community.

c. Individual volumes:

Volume 1: The 2010 edition of the Global Community Yearbook presents three categories of material wholly beneficial to any international law-researcher: International tribunals' court opinions, excerpted with scholarly skill by General Editor Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo; expert guidance on those cases in the form of commentary by globally recognized luminaries whom Ziccardi has chosen personally; and more broadly focused introductory essays by similarly prominent scholars whom Ziccardi has also selected for that purpose. In the introductory essays, those scholars take on current topics such as global intellectual property law and policy, the nature of international law and human development, and the legal-political connotation of material support to terrorism.

These incisive and knowledgeable introductory articles help frame the debates currently raging in international law before this edition leads the reader on to expert commentary on the noteworthy cases from this past year's dockets of the following tribunals:

- The International Court of Justice
- The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
- WTO Dispute Settlement System
- International Criminal Court
- International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
- International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
- Court of Justice of the European Union

Ziccardi has arranged the sections of this volume according to that list of tribunals, and she has included a short, targeted index for each of those sections, making any research in this volume efficient and fruitful.

The 2010 edition of the Global Community Yearbook also gives researchers an illuminating tour through the varied and dynamic law of regional and organizational courts. In the court opinion excerpts and expert commentary that fill this volume, researchers will find detailed guidance on a rich diversity of legal topics. On these questions and a host of others, this volume provides to students, scholars, and practitioners alike a valuable combination of expert discussion and direct quotes from the court opinions to which that discussion relates. The courts covered in this edition include:

- The Court of Justice
- The European Court of Human Rights
- Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes

About the Author:
Professor Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo is an internationally recognized expert in international law generally and in international criminal law specifically. In addition to her work as professor at the University of Salerno and as General Editor of the Global Community Yearbook, she has edited a case reporter for the International Court of Justice and has authored a monograph whose English title, in translation, would be International Terrorism & Collective Security. In other writings, Professor Ziccardi has made influential insights into the increasingly accepted principle of Customary International Law.