Volume 18, Issue 3

Since the Soviet Union's emergence as a willing participant in foreign capital investment ventures, the amount of legal literature on the subject has proliferated at an amazing rate. The research runs the gamut from newsletters and bulletins to highly complex compendia of texts and documents packaged in complete looseleaf binders for supplements so that the reader can keep abreast of fast-breaking developments. Lawyers and law students of all masts vie for space in publication columns to try their hand at this high-profile and highly current topic. Even Soviet jurists and economists try to cash in on this publication bonanza by coming out with pronouncements on joint-venture opportunities which are translated into English with the hope of widespread Western consumption.

International finance is a fast growing and constantly changing area of economic activity. Along with permanent improvements in traditional financial instruments, totally new markets and products such as Eurocurrency markets of Eurobonds have been developed during recent decades. Legal aspects of international finance touch upon so many different problems that only a few of them can be covered in this guide and only in an introductory manner. The guide is not intended as a complete bilbiography but as a selection of some important or representative, general materials in English. The emphasis is on recent publications, which can easily lead to older and more extensive studies.

Included among the documentation prepared for the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana August 27-September 7, 1990, is an item that should be of interest to readers of this journal. This is a Compendium of United Nations Standards and Norms in Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. Issued with the date May 11, 1990, the document carries the symbol A/CONF.144/INF.2 and covers 140 pages. Part I on “Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice” includes the text of 22 norms and standards and runs to 80 pages. Part II, entitled “Human Rights,” is not detailed here, but includes the texts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two International Covenants—on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights (instruments collectively known as the International Bill of Human Rights). Also included in Part II are the two optional protocols to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture, the recently adopted Convention on the Rights of the Child (see below) and two other norms concerning the rights of prisoners.