With this new overall issue of TDM, we have a particular nugget: John Brooks in-depth narrative of the history of the Barcelona Traction Case, not a legal discussion of the case, but of the factual history that led to the famous case before the International Court of Justice, a story of intrigue, politics and legal manoeuvering that comes close to today's story of the Yukos case. As in Yukos, Barcelona traction was manoeuvered into bankruptcy in essence by a secret acquisition of debt, combined with a politically engineered prohibition against Barcelona Traction to pay the debt; like Yukos, it was then sold off on the cheap to companies controlled by Juan March, the mover behind the scenes. Before courts and tribunals, usually only certain facets of the facts show up, mainly those which are available to the parties (and much story is often not available) and which it suits them to present for advocacy reason. Most famous cases therefore are a type of "black box", we see the outside, but we don't know what is inside. It was very hard to get permission to publish this wonderful historical narrative - John Brooks passed away in 1987.

We also continue the republication of Judge Stephen Schwebel's recent writings, made possible by Judge Stephen Schwebel, Chairman of the TDM editorial board and former President of the International Court of Justice.

There is a large wealth of material from commercial arbitration, international investment arbitration and international investment law mainly, together with many book review and round-up country-focused stories and case comments. TDM has now been made more productive for subscribers as we have introduced "instant publication" of many choice contributions; in addition, TDM makes available the very up-to-date, controversial, colourful and insightful discussions on my OGEMID discussion forum through the searchable OGEMID archive.