Greetings from Chicago!
With this issue, I officially begin my tenure as editor of the International Journal of Legal Information (IJLI). When I joined IALL in 2009, I never could have envisioned that I would eventually take on this role, and I am very grateful to the IALL Board for selecting me to take the reins. I am also thankful to the instructors in the University of Chicago's editing program who taught me the skills needed to succeed as a general editor and copyeditor. I'm not embarrassed to admit that it took me two tries to pass “Editing Electronically,” a challenging course for someone like me who spent many an evening in college typing papers. Indeed, academic editing and publishing have both significantly evolved since the 1980s.
The beginning of this editorial journey has been a bit rocky, as Cambridge University Press (CUP) has been a bit slow on the draw in transitioning to my tenure. I'm hopeful, however, that those hiccups have been resolved, and apologies are certainly in order for the tardiness of issues 51.2 (Summer 2023) and 51.3 (Winter 2023). As I mentioned in the previous issue, I've asked CUP to use its FirstView service, which will put our articles online individually before the full issue is online, and the print issue is sent out. IALL members and Cambridge Core subscribers will thus have earlier access to the IJLI's articles, and the authors’ scholarship will be disseminated faster.
I have selected a rather eclectic set of items for this issue, both in terms of geography and substance. Starting with Latin America, Juan Andrés-Fuentes of Harvard University examines the Ecuadorian government's use of so-called “humanitarian corridors” to slow down the pace of Venezuelan migrants entering Ecuador. Moving to India, Professor Shivani Sagar Kalra of the Jindal Global Law School at O.P. Jindal Global University provides a compelling look at how four WTO mechanisms can play a crucial role in accelerating climate action. Also from India is a fascinating piece penned by Adv. Akash, who is a Research Scholar and Junior Research Fellow at the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and his advisor, Professor Shuvro Prosun Sarker. This timely article focuses on the legal frameworks related to genetic information protection in seven Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Moving to other parts of Asia, Professors Sapto Hermawan, Zenia Aziz Khoirunisa, and Kukuh Tejomurti of the Universitas Sebelas Maret in Central Java, Indonesia, examine how open banking is implemented and regulated in Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore. In addition to the aforementioned contributions, I compiled a short piece on the status of legal education and scholarship in Ukraine. The article includes a bibliography and features three Ukrainian law professors’ responses to a survey I drafted in December 2023. Although this is not a scientific or empirical study, the faculty members’ responses provide a glimpse at how legal education and scholarship have fared since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Finally, many thanks to Caroline Osborne—both for her work as editor of the Book Review section and also for authoring a lovely tribute to Duncan Alford (1963–2023), who was a great contributor to the law librarianship profession.
I hope to see many of you at the IALL Annual Course (the 42nd!) in Oslo in June. I also invite you (the reader) to research, write, and publish in the IJLI.
