How to cite a UN treaty (BibTex entry)

Question

I need to add to my bibliography (in LaTeX, using Bibtex) an entry for the Paris Agreement (2015): https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=_en

However, I have been unable to find any BibTeX-style (or, for that matter, any citation format) for how to cite such a UN treaty. What would be the right format?

Answer 1

Short answer: there is nothing exactly on point ready to hand. It can be approximated quickly, though.

Slightly longer answer:

Depends on what information you need to pass on to your reader.

What will come into play is choosing from a combination of already existing biblatex styles and the entry types they support.

For example, for general purposes:

The oxnotes biblatex style has a @legal bib entry type, and piltreaty subentrytype, which handles the legally relevant dates. URLs are not really part of that picture (yet).

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}

@legal{paris,
entrysubtype = {piltreaty},
title = {Paris Agreement},
shorthand = {Paris Agreement},
execution = {adopted=2015-12-12 and inforce=2016-11-04},
pagination = {article},
journaltitle = {United Nations Treaty Collection, Chapter XXVII 7. d},
url = {https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=_en},
urldate = {2019-03-28}
}

\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=oxnotes,
        isourls=true,
        ]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

\section{Oxnotes Style, @legal entry type}
As stated in the \citetitle[Article 4, paragraph 2]{paris}: ``Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, ...''

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Result:

The apa style, by contrast, has a @data entry type which looks promising: it does a nice url, but its dates are limited (more publication-related), and there is not a cascade of them.

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}


@data{paris,
title = {Paris Agreement},
type = {UN Treaty},
entrysubtype = {Treaty No. XXVII-7-d},
%shorthand = {Paris Agreement},
day = {12},
month  = {12},
year = {2015},
organization = {United Nations},
 url ={https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=_en},
  urlday = {28},
  urlmonth = {3},
  urlyear = {2019},
  author = {},
}

\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

\section{APA Style, @data entry type}
As stated in the \citetitle[Article 4, paragraph 2]{paris}: ``Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, ...''

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Result:

To get an idea of the effort needed to adapt a style, adding a url to the oxnotes legal entry turns out to be a one-line change, since all the heavy lifting and pre-work (field definition, assignment and allocation; date parsing and processing; options processing; string constant definition) has already been done.

We just get the already-formatted and packaged url+urldate and "bung it in" at the end (literally) of the bit that prints the formatted legal entry item in the bibliography (code from the foundational oxref.dbx file and copied into our document tex file's preamble:

\DeclareBibliographyDriver{legal}{%
  \usebibmacro{bibindex}%
  \usebibmacro{begentry}%
  \iffieldequals{entrysubtype}{\explanatorynote}{%
    \printfield[default]{title}%
    \setunit{\addspace}\newblock
  }{%
    \iffieldequals{entrysubtype}{\parliamentarytype}{%
      \usebibmacro{legal:parliamentary}%
    }{%
      \usebibmacro{treatycitation}}}%
  \setunit{\addcomma\space}\newblock
  \printfield[default]{note}
  \setunit{\addspace}\newblock
  \setunit{\bibpagerefpunct}%
  \usebibmacro{pageref}%
  \usebibmacro{url+urldate}%=========== this line
  \usebibmacro{finentry}}

MWE:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}

@legal{paris,
entrysubtype = {piltreaty},
title = {Paris Agreement},
shorthand = {Paris Agreement},
execution = {adopted=2015-12-12 and inforce=2016-11-04},
pagination = {article},
journaltitle = {United Nations Treaty Collection, Chapter XXVII 7. d},
url = {https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-7-d&chapter=27&clang=_en},
urldate = {2019-03-28}
}

\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[12pt]{article}


%=============================
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=oxnotes,
        isourls=true,
        ]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}



%=============================
\DeclareBibliographyDriver{legal}{%
  \usebibmacro{bibindex}%
  \usebibmacro{begentry}%
  \iffieldequals{entrysubtype}{\explanatorynote}{%
    \printfield[default]{title}%
    \setunit{\addspace}\newblock
  }{%
    \iffieldequals{entrysubtype}{\parliamentarytype}{%
      \usebibmacro{legal:parliamentary}%
    }{%
      \usebibmacro{treatycitation}}}%
  \setunit{\addcomma\space}\newblock
  \printfield[default]{note}
  \setunit{\addspace}\newblock
  \setunit{\bibpagerefpunct}%
  \usebibmacro{pageref}%
  \usebibmacro{url+urldate}%=========== this line
  \usebibmacro{finentry}}




\begin{document}

\section{Oxnotes Style, @legal entry type (mod)}
As stated in the \citetitle[Article 4, paragraph 2]{paris}: ``Parties shall pursue domestic mitigation measures, ...''

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Result:

To change the apa style to be able to handle the dates is TML (too many lines) - for me, anyway :) . Doable, certainly. But not a five-minute job. Although, thinking about it for a moment, the dates could go in as extra, individual fields, and then get formatted, and with bibstrings added. So, six minutes, then.

Answer 2

I regularly cite UN treaties as an international law researcher, and so far the best footnote style I've found is oscola and the best endnote style is oxnum (both based on Biblatex). They conveniently use the same bibliographic format with the piltreaty subtype and treaty-specific fields. The relevant entry in my .bib file looks like this:

@legal{ParisAgreement,
  entrysubtype = {piltreaty},
  title        = {Paris Agreement},
  execution    = {adopted=2015-12-12 and inforce=2016-11-04},
  pagination   = {article},
  reporter     = {A.T.S.},
  series       = {2016},
  pages        = {24},
  note         = {},
  shorttitle   = {Paris Agreement},
}

This produces "Paris Agreement (adopted 12 Dec. 2015, entered into force 4 Nov. 2016) ATS 2016 24." as a full reference. The url is not typically added in legal citations, but could be done as described by Cicada's answer.

In this case I refer to the Australian Treaty Series (ATS), but only because the Paris Agreement has not been published in a United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) volume yet. The UNTS online url for the Paris Agreement is this, and it will show an UNTS vol and page number when it's published there. UNTS is the main UN treaty publication, not the one you point to in your question. If you do want to cite that one, the series name is "Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary General", abbreviated MTDSG.

You can find more examples and explanations in my Gitlab repo on treaty references with python scripts that generate .bib files from data scraped from UNTS and ATS. It's easy generate a project-specific .bib file if e.g. a particular publication/submission is not supposed to include the date of entry into force of a treaty, just remove the relevant information from the bibliographic entry.

N.B.: This is answer is for the best case scenario where you can choose the citation style yourself or the required style is identical or very similar to what oscola and oxnum (or other oxref packages) produce.