Book Review, Gerhard Ullrich. The Law of the International Civil Service. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2018. Pp 538. € 89,90. ISBN: 978-3-428-14914-8

Abstract

The Law of the International Civil Service, by Gerhard Ullrich, offers a detailed and up-to-date picture of one of the densest and most legalistic areas of the law of international organizations (IOs). The back cover describes this volume as “practice-oriented” and, cryptically, “legal-dogmatic”. These reveal two fundamental features of the book which characterize its major virtues, but also its limits. While the main virtue of the volume lies in its encyclopaedic character, its primary limit is a lack of theoretical analysis, which reflects the fact that this is a field of law usually considered to be the exclusive interest of practitioners. Yet this need not remain so; and in this review, I take advantage of the opportunity to introduce this work in a manner that encourages an academic focus on the law of the international civil service.

Keywords: international law, international organizations, international civil service