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PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2025 AALL New Product Award Winner: U.S. State Commitments with Foreign Governments

The most comprehensive collection of its kind receives prestigious award.

May 15, 2025

May 2025.HeinOnline, a product of William S. Hein & Co., Inc., is pleased to announce that U.S. State Commitments with Foreign Governments has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the AALL New Product Award—a prestigious honor presented by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) to recognize innovative and impactful legal information resources.

This unique resource sheds light on agreements made by U.S. states with foreign governments, which has never before been comprehensively documented. 

About the AALL New Product Award

The AALL New Product Award honors new commercial legal information products that enhance or improve existing law library services, research processes, or information access. Eligible products are those introduced within the last two years and must demonstrate innovation, practical utility, and value to the legal information community. 

About the Award-Winning Database

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 and only comprehensive collection of these international commitments, featuring:

  • Full collection of 750+ commitments online
  • More than 3,500 pages of primary source materials
  • Browse by state, country, or subject 
  • Tailored searching via the Commitment Index tool 

About the Editor

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 ReviewDuke Law Journal, and Yale Journal of International Law, and his commentary has been cited by major media outlets including the New York TimesWashington PostThe Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Pricing

A subscription to U.S. State Commitments with Foreign Governments 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.
 
Print and online access: $295.00.

About HeinOnline and William S. Hein & Co., Inc.

HeinOnline is a product of William S. Hein & Co., Inc., a leading publishing company that has been serving the law library community for 100 years. HeinOnline is a premier online research database that provides comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 3,400 multidisciplinary periodicals, essential government documents, international treaties and trials, case law, and much more. Composed of image-based PDFs and available at an affordable price, the wealth of material allows academic institutions, government agencies, law firms, court systems, corporations, and other organizations access to authoritative, true-to-print digital material without the hassle or cost of using multiple research databases. Furthermore, subscriptions to HeinOnline consistently increase in value without added cost as HeinOnline adds daily, weekly, and monthly content while continuously incorporating new artificial intelligence tools for easier research. More information about HeinOnline and William S. Hein & Co., Inc. is available here: home.heinonline.org.

Contact Information

Benjamin N. Boron
Vice President, Sales & Marketing
William S. Hein & Co., Inc. & HeinOnline
Getzville, NY 14068
(716) 882-2600
bboron@wshein.com

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