A heavy book reached me a few weeks ago. A book which is a massive volume, both with regard to its page numbers and its content. And it holds the simple title Antarctica in international law, no subtitle or anything else that would add more colour to it. But there is no need as the title is self-explanatory. Because this is a compendium of primary legal materials concerning Antarctica that trace the evolution of Antarctic as a legal space from its inception through the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, via the emergence of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), the Antarctic Consultative Meetings (ATCM) from 1963 up to 2013, the establishment of the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat in 2003 as well different measures adopted under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). But bear in mind that this book has more than 1,000 pages! The materials don't stop there. Instead, reports and resolutions under the United Nations concerning Antarctica, the ‘Question of Antarctica’, are presented, followed by international and domestic judicial proceedings, materials submitted under the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) with regard to Antarctic territorial claims and lastly bilateral agreements regarding Antarctic cooperation.

The trained expert in Antarctic law may quickly notice that, albeit its impressive appearance, the book does not contain all Antarctic legal materials, but the diversity of these, the long duration of Antarctic legal developments and the associated sheer number of materials would create indeed an encyclopaedia of several thousand pages. But as the editors of this volume clarify in the Introduction, it was not their intention (nor was it possible) to compile every single legal text, but instead to ‘provide governments, researchers, and students with an accessible and up-to-date compendium of the treaties, decisions, resolutions, recommendations, conservations measures, guidelines and other documents that are of central relevance to contemporary Antarctic governance’ (page lxix). This, however, occurs with the focus on multilateral, international law, and purposefully excludes national legal and policy texts regarding sovereignty claims in Antarctica as well as international law also applicable in the Antarctic, such as international law pertaining to the law of the sea, biodiversity or human rights, to name a few.

In order to better be able to contextualise the provided materials, the editors have included an extensive table of key events for the evolution of the Antarctic legal and political space since Lozier's sighting of the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island in 1739 up until the year 2013. Moreover, the brief Introduction explains the key issues surrounding Antarctica, its geography and ecology, territorial claims and the ATS with its different facets.

Apart from these, the reader will find only uncommented primary legal materials the compilation of which is further explained in the Introduction. And it is for this reviewer rather difficult to write a critical review of this book without having to delve into examining the legal texts themselves. The outcome would be a multi-year-encompassing legal analysis of the Antarctic legal space, probably yielding several volumes the size of the present. It can only be hoped that the readers of Polar Record do not expect this to happen.

In this reviewer's opinion, however, a volume like the present is long overdue as it enables easy access to Antarctic law. The claim of ‘easy access’ rests on the inclusion of a detailed Index at the end of the book and at the same time a well-structured table of contents, significantly simplifying the tracing and ultimately finding of specific elements and contexts of Antarctic governance. And here lies probably the most important asset of this volume: making Antarctic law accessible without having to search through the extensive databases of the United Nations or the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, of which especially the latter can indeed be quite tiresome when looking for specific materials.

Since the book does not contain any analyses of the legal materials, the reader should turn elsewhere for critical discussions regarding the ATS’ evolution, application, compliance etc. Antarctica in international law is thus not a book to learn about the Antarctic legal space, but to work with it. This leaves this reviewer with only one conclusion: when working with Antarctic law, Saul's and Stephen's compendium should be close by. Simply because it makes life so much easier!.