Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very Excellent! Yet challenging for beginners
Comment: No doubt that this book is one of the most authoritative and orthodox textbooks in this field. With prolific cases and legal reasoning, this book offers a clear and profound understanding on "principles of international law," especially its Sources, Jurisdictions, and subjects, and basic theories thereof. A must have for those majoring in international law, I should say. As for beginners, however, this book might seem quite challenging. A better-balanced structure would make Prof. Brownlie's book look all the more perfect; despite its overwhelming reasoning and theories, the book somewhat lacks in such topics as the ICC and law of war. For beginners who want to learn general aspects of international law, I would rather recommend Prof. Peter Malanczuk's "Akehurst's modern introduction of international law" or Prof. Malcolm Shaw's "International Law"
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of P.I.L.
Comment: Ian Brownlie's Principles of Public International Law is certainly one of the standard textbooks on international law, and it deserves to be considered as one of the most highly reputed books in the field. How else would it already have been published in its fifth edition (the first edition was published 35 years ago, in 1966) and translated into Russian, Japanese and Portuguese? On more than 700 pages Professor Brownlie covers topics such as sources of international law, the relation between national and international law, subjects of international law, statehood and sovereignty, the law of the sea, jurisdiction and state responsibility to name but a few. As regards the contents of the book, its only disadvantage is that it hardly contains anything about the use of force and the United Nations. However, the topics that are covered are covered very well, and for those who do not find enough information, plenty of reference is made to judicial decisions or further literature in the footnotes.
Some teachers say the book is difficult to read but when I spent a year in England as an exchange student I did not find it too difficult to read even though I am not a native speaker. (There are, however, books which are easier to read, e.g. Akehurst's Modern Introduction to International Law.)
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