In recent years, instruments and institutions for dispute settlement have multiplied. They now cover almost all areas of international law ranging from international economic law and international criminal law to more traditional fields such as arbitration procedures. Given this development, it became necessary, if not mandatory, to envisage a revised, updated and considerably enlarged second edition of the standard compilation of texts and materials on dispute settlement in public international law, which was first published in 1984 under the auspices of the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Continuing that tradition, the second edition has largely retained the purpose and concept of the publication, namely to make available to researchers, scholars and practitioners a comprehensive collection of more than 150 different instruments which are otherwise sometimes rather difficult to find elsewhere.