American Journal of International Law

For Authors

Submit Manuscript

How to Submit:

The American Journal of International Law (AJIL) welcomes submissions throughout the year.

Interested authors may submit Articles, Essays, and Current Developments on international law and U.S. foreign relations law. To ensure timely processing of your manuscript, please ensure that your submission is properly formatted according to the following guidelines. If you have any questions regarding your submission, please email admin_ajil@columbia.edu

Whether or not submitted for Board review, a manuscript that has been rejected, even if revised,
should not be resubmitted to AJIL.

By submitting your manuscript to AJIL, you are confirming that this is an piece of original work, meaning it has not been published in any form prior to this submission, including in other publications or blogs.

Conflict of Interest
All authors must include a competing interest declaration on their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting the manuscript must include competing interst declarations relevant to all contributin authors.

Example wording for a declearation is as follows: “Competing interests: Author A is employed at organisation B. Author C is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state: “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none.”

AJIL normally will not publish manuscripts that have substantial discussion of a case in which an author has had direct involvement—for example, as a party, representative of a party, judge, or arbitrator. Other connections to a case, such as participation in an amicus curiae brief, will be evaluated on an individual basis, and any such connections will need to be disclosed in the first footnote of the paper.

Pre-Submission Inquiries
AJIL is not able to address pre-submission inquiries. AJIL invites the submission of manuscripts on international law subjects as well as closely related issues of global governance, transnational law, and foreign relations law.  It generally does not publish manuscripts focused on purely private or commercial law or on comparative or foreign law.  If your manuscript fits within AJIL’s scope and you would like to submit, please read the complete Instructions for Authors here.

Submission Format:

Please submit all material in .doc or .docx format. Please do not submit manuscripts in .PDF format.

Lead Article: research article of no more than 25,000 words (including footnotes), but will consider manuscripts up to 30,000 words in exceptional cases.

Essay: shorter article of up to 11,000 words, with less extensive footnotes.

Current Development: comments on recent developments in the field of up to 11,000 words; many will be shorter, e.g., 5000 words.

Abstract: Articles and Essays require an Abstract of no more than 150 words. The Abstract must be a brief summary of the manuscript and should not introduce new ideas that are not mentioned in the main body of the manuscript.

Title page: Please include a separate title page that lists the manuscript’s title, author’s contact, and affiliation information.

Cover letter: Please provide a brief cover letter that states whether or not the manuscript has been submitted exclusively to AJIL (see additional information below). In addition, at the bottom of the cover letter, please identify which category from the list below best describes your manuscript:

  • African/Asia-Pacific/Latin American/East European Perspectives
  • Customary International Law
  • Cyber and High-Tech
  • Foreign Relations Law
  • International Courts and Dispute Resolution
  • International Criminal Law
  • International Economic Law
  • International Environmental Law
  • International Human Rights Law
  • International Investment Law
  • International Legal History
  • International Legal Theory
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations and Global Governance
  • International Trade Law
  • Law of Armed Conflict/Laws of War
  • Law of Culture/Gender/Development
  • Law of Sea, Air, Space
  • Migration/Asylum/Citizenship
  • Private International Law
  • Security, Arms, and Conflict Management
  • Treaties and International Agreements
  • Other [please identify the category]

Manuscripts should be double-spaced in 12-point, Times New Roman font, including all text, footnotes, and block quotations, and formatted flush left. No extra spaces should be inserted between paragraphs or footnotes. Each new paragraph should begin with a single tab indentation.

Please ensure that the manuscript does not contain any author-identifying information to keep the review process properly anonymized. This information should be included on the title page.

Please note that CVs are not required and should not be included as part of your submission.

Manuscripts should be submitted with footnotes, not endnotes, adhering to The Bluebook (20th Edition) citation style. All footnotes should be automatically numbered by use of Arabic numbers.

For more information and the AJIL Style guide, please download the full author instructions here.

Submission Policies

Exclusive Submissions: AJIL does not require exclusive submissions. Priority consideration will, however, be accorded to manuscripts for which the author states in their cover letter that the submission is exclusive for a period of fourteen (14) days, during which time the author will not submit the manuscript to any other journals. We will treat the manuscript as not exclusively submitted to AJIL unless specifically stated otherwise in the author’s cover letter.

Authors of manuscripts not submitted on an exclusive basis should bear in mind that, as a peer reviewed journal, AJIL may have difficulty responding to requests for expedited review within the time limits typically fixed by American law reviews that have made offers of publication.

Simultaneous Submissions and Withdrawal of Manuscripts: Should the author receive and accept an offer of publication while the manuscript is still under review by AJIL, it is the author’s responsibility to alert AJIL’s editorial office immediately and withdraw the manuscript from consideration.

Review Process

AJIL typically receives several hundred submissions each year for Articles, Essays, and Current Developments from scholars and practitioners around the world. All such submissions are considered by the Co-Editors-in-Chief as soon as feasible upon receipt, with expedited attention paid to exclusive submissions and to manuscripts, including candidates for Essays and Current Developments, that are less than 11,000 words.