I’m writing something up, and I need to cite one of my references, which is an international agreement. How do I list is among all my other documents, which have dates, authors, etc.? Specifically, I’m trying to cite the Convention for the Establishment of a European Space Agency, an agreement between governments creating an international organization, which was signed and came into effect on the dates described here.
Is there a standard way to deal with these sort of treaties?
When we had to write papers, it was customary to include book or articles which have authors in the bibliography, but not legal documents such as statutes or treaties.
the way we dealth with treasties was this: If it’s a common treaty which is cited frequently, such as the European Community of the European Union Treaties, or the European Convention on Human Rights, or the UN Charter, we simply cited them by putting a generally acknowledged abbreviation of the document (such as “Art. 4 ECHR” in the case of the European Convention on Human Rights). If it’s a less important document, we’d cite the full title of the treaty in the text (“Article 4 of the Convention for the Establishment of a European Space Agency”); additionally, we’d put a footnote at the end of the treaty title and cite in the footnote an official or semi-official source where you can find the text of the treaty. This “official source” can be ILM (International Legal Materials), or the UN Treaty Series (under Article 102 of the UN Charter, treaties can be registered with the United Nations, and the UN keeps a record of all the registered treaties and publishes them). It can also be the text of the national ratification act to the treaty in the official gazette of a country which is a party to the agreement.
But that was the way we dealt with it. Since the rules and guidelines on academic citation vary wildly internationally, the rules which apply to you can be totally different.