Things to Remember About the Interplay of KZ and K Subclass K Schedules Jolande Goldberg Library of Congress goldberg@mail.loc.gov

You may want to make a copy of this info below and tape it into your appropriate schedules to help you in your understanding of the two schedules. If you are like me, the village idiot, you'll need to read this a couple of times through and then hope it sinks in.

Brian Striman

The KZ schedule is a definitive classification schedule for public international law with its traditional subjects: Theory/philosophy, objects and subjects (including Intergovernmental organizations), peace and peace enforcement (including disarmament), and law of war. Its only subclasses, so far, are KZA (Law of the Sea) and KZD (Space Law).

Class K (Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence), in contrast to KZ, is the definitive classification schedule for comparisons of national laws. Further, it's also for the supraregional law on all aspects, branches, and subjects of the law that have been so far identified in the LC Classification as under the jurisdiction of individual states but brought to the level of uniform law by treaty. Therefore, branches of the law and subjects included in Class K are Commercial and Economic law, Environmental law (with its subdivisions for natural resources and anti-pollution laws), and Constitutional law (with its subdivision Human and Civil rights). Only in the area of Environmental law and Economic law have parallel arrangements been provided in the schedules K, KZ and KZA (as described in the "JZ/KZ Historic Notes...") because of large international regimes that include different divisions of the law. The "Human rights" question is currently being investigated by several institutions cooperating with LC. We will keep you posted on further developments.

Ah, yes. You're wondering about "supraregional" — (there may be a difference in use of the terminology supranational vs. supraregional; we'll keep you posted on this one; they can be seen in some literature as being synonymous). Anyway, the term supranational is law binding upon members of a regional organization (like the European Union) at issuance of the law(s), the same way as national law is binding at the promulgation date. And always, always, remember that parallel arrangements in the schedules are for the benefit of libraries that do not wish to reclass back and forth as furniture moves in the international legal living room. In the case of international regimes, the scenario is worse -- they do not respect classification delimitations, but they are logical, as the High-seas regime proves.