The Hague Justice Portal

The Portal itself comprises five main sections: ‘News and Events’, ‘Projects’, ‘Academic Research’, ‘The Hague’ and ‘Portal’.

News and Events: This news section includes up-to-date information about what happens in the international courts and about their crucial judgments and decisions, issued from official sources and edited by legal experts. The event calendar announces legal events, conferences, lectures and speeches taking place in The Hague.[4][5]

Academic Research: This is the focal point of the Portal where court documents, commentaries, articles, press releases and an important bibliography of books are accessible. The Hague Justice Journal – Journal Judiciaire de La Haye contains articles and commentaries by expert commentators analysing legal issues, as well as an overview of recent decisions.[6]

Projects: Currently, the Hague Justice Portal has two specific projects. The first one is undertaken in close collaboration with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) for the sake of digitalising a number of the Court’s historic international arbitral awards which were previously unavailable in electronic format. The second one is called the DomCLIC project, which is a pilot for an ever-expanding database of domestic jurisprudence relating to international criminal law from countries all over the world.[7][8] In April 2014, Colette O'Donovan agreed to lead a new project. The Hague Justice Gender Project will focus on raising awareness of issues and events specifically relating to gender in international law.

The Hague: This part of the website offers an interesting insight into the city of The Hague. Whether you are a tourist or an expatriate, or consider moving to The Hague, the Portal wishes to guide you in your first steps. Visitors also have access to a vacancy list of job opportunities in the city, including legal and justice-related employment and internship positions.[9]

Portal: This final section provides information about the Hague Academic Coalition(HAC) to which the Portal pertains. This consortium of institutions that work in the fields of international relations and international law offers their latest publications and research papers.[10]

The Portal has already acquired considerable attention from the community of jurists.

Having historical PCA arbitration awards on line, freely-accessible and in one place, is helpful to researchers.[11][12] Information is also easily available on such important cases as that of Slobodan Milošević, Charles G. Taylor, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo and Vojislav Šešelj.[13][14]

For the first time, persons around the world will be able to monitor ICC trials.[15] Cornell Law School's web site, a well-used web site for legal research, now links to the Portal.[16] The International Justice Tribune, another site for International law also links to the Portal.[17] Several scholars so far have used and cited the Portal in their research, one about the David Hicks case,[18] and another about the Hariri Tribunal.[19]