The Rise, Relative Fall and Globalisation of Trans- national Law Journals (1964-2024)

This article represents the first attempt to retrace and map the historical and contemporary evolution of transnational law journals, thereby unveiling a blind spot in the history of scientific periodicals in international law. Section I provides a contextualised overview of the emergence of the first generation of transnational law journals, a subset of student-edited international law journals published in the United States between 1964 and 1984. Section II situates the relative decline of transnational law journals in the United States (US) and the early stages of their globalisation within the broader context of the significant transformations experienced by international law journals worldwide between 1984 and 2004. Section III examines the decisive contemporary globalisation of transnational law journals in light of key drivers that have reshaped the landscape of international legal publishing during this period, including increased specialisation, the widespread adoption of blind peer review, legal hybridisation, and inter-disciplinarisation. The conclusion summarises the article’s main findings and outlines the promising prospects for transnational law journals in light of historical patterns, particularly amid growing doubts about the problem-solving capacity of traditional state-centred international law.