Introduction to the East Timor Law Journal on WordPress

Welcome to the East Timor Law Journal on Wordpress.

East Timor Law Journal began on 3 March 2004 primarily to publish analyses, commentaries and legal opinions on the laws, the legal system and legal policy in East Timor.

The original site domain was http://www.eastimorlawjournal.org but as the expense and complexity of maintaining that site became prohibitive for the publisher, it was decided to transfer the journal to this free platform in order to preserve the more significant articles that were published on the original site.

As some of the original articles have become outdated as new legislation has been enacted during the 10 years since the transfer of sovereignty from the United Nations to the newly created State of East Timor (sometimes referred to as Timor-Leste) in 2002, those articles have not been republished here but may still be found using one of the internet look-back sites.

Many articles have been cited in other works as authoritative analyses of numerous legal issues in East Timor and we would like to encourage readers to submit their own new works for review and publication.

It is proposed in due course to compile an annotation of such articles that cite the works published on the East Timor Law Journal with links to those articles to facilitate research sought to be undertaken on the law and legal policy in East Timor.

Ultimately, it is hoped that the East Timor Law Journal will continue to contribute to the scholarly debate of legal issues and the development of legal policy and legislation, raise global awareness of the many and complicated legal problems faced by this relatively new nation and contribute to the entrenchment of the concepts of the rule of law, human rights and democracy in a place where none of those concepts has a happy history.

Warren L. Wright BA LLB
Solicitor & Barrister
09 April 2012