We are thrilled to announce that HeinOnline’s U.S. State Commitments with Foreign Governments has been named the recipient of the 2025 American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) New Product Award. As the first and only resource of its kind, this print and online award-winning database delivers unprecedented transparency into state-level international commitments.
About the New Product Award
Initially established as a project of the AALL’s Committee on Research and Information Vendors in 1995, the prestigious New Product Award has since transitioned to being held by its own separate jury. It honors “new commercial information products that enhance or improve existing law library services or procedures or innovative products which improve access to legal information, the legal process, or procedures for technical processing of library materials.”
A Groundbreaking Legal Research Tool
As global challenges grow more complex, U.S. states are stepping beyond their borders to cooperate with foreign governments on a range of pressing issues—from climate change and economic development to education, law enforcement, and public health. While this practice—known as paradiplomacy—has surged in recent decades, it remained largely undocumented and inaccessible to the public—until the release of this groundbreaking database.
U.S. State Commitments with Foreign Governments is the first comprehensive collection of these subnational international agreements, documenting more than 750 commitments across every U.S. state. It allows users to browse by state, country, or across 14 subject areas, and offers full-text access to more than 3,500 pages of original documentation.
Users of this comprehensive source have the ability to:
- Uncover a developing diplomatic frontier
- Analyze an opaque practice
- Understand the law in practice
Behind the Scenes: A Monumental Archival Effort
This unprecedented collection is the culmination of a multi-year research project spearheaded by Professor Ryan Scoville, a legal scholar at Marquette University Law School with deep expertise in U.S. foreign relations law and public international law. Recognizing the growing importance—and opacity—of subnational diplomacy, Scoville set out to document this largely hidden facet of U.S. state behavior on the global stage.
To build the database, he filed more than 650 public records requests, targeting every major administrative agency across all 50 U.S. states. These efforts uncovered over 750 individual commitments, spanning more than 3,500 pages.
Scoville’s scholarship has appeared in leading legal journals such as the Michigan Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and Yale Journal of International Law, and his commentary has been cited by major media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Pricing
Add this award-winning print and online resource to your collection today.
$295.00 (one-time payment for the current edition)
- Includes access to the HeinOnline database and one copy of the print version.
- Customers will not be invoiced again until the next edition is released, which is tentatively slated for 3-4 years after the publication of the first edition. At that time, the database will be updated with new agreements obtained via freedom-of-information requests.
