The invasion and occupation of Iraq rank among the most controversial and complex issues in international law in recent history. This volume of documents covers the occupation of Iraq from the planning stages of the invasion of Iraq in early 2002 to the transfer of governing authority to the Iraqi Interim Government on June 28, 2004. The book presents 595 selected documents, including the first complete set of all Regulations, Orders, Memoranda, and Public Notices issued by the US-led occupation administration of Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), several of which were never published on the CPA's website or promulgated in Alwaqai Aliraqiya, the Official Gazette of Iraq. Some of these legal acts have shaped the economic and political system of present day Iraq and will be part of the country's legal order for years to come. The book also includes some 120 other CPA and CPA-related documents selected from more than 5,000 unclassified CPA documents and received under freedom of information requests lodged in the US, the UK, Australia, and Switzerland. These documents include: instructions and proclamations to the Iraqi people in the early stages of the occupation * organizational charts * internal legal opinions * diplomatic notes * international agreements concluded by the CPA with other States * numerous internal memoranda for the head of the CPA, Ambassador Paul L. Bremer, on legal, diplomatic, and political issues. The book also presents, for the first time, all 235 resolutions passed by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) between July 2003 and June 2004.

The resolutions, as well as many of the 25 other important IGC documents (including various political statements, press releases, and decrees of the Council's Higher National De-Ba'athification Commission), have been translated from Arabic and are presented here for the first time in English. These documents are complemented by the relevant UN documents on the occupation of Iraq, as well as some 50 policy documents of the US, the UK, and the Iraqi opposition movement, along with relevant fatw's (religious rulings) of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which shaped the internal Iraqi political process during the occupation. This collection archives these important documents for future use and makes them easily accessible to researchers and professionals. Considering that the main source of information for the occupying powers in Iraq were the precedents set during the First and Second World Wars, the occupation of Iraq will serve as a modern precedent for future administrations of occupied territory. The documents are made easily accessible by a comprehensive table of documents, a list of abbreviations, more than 1,100 explanatory notes and cross-references, and a substantive subject index. This volume will be complemented by a monograph by the same author (scheduled for publication in late 2013) which, on the basis of the documents collection, presents a comprehensive analysis of the governance of occupied territory in contemporary international law. (Series: Documents in International Law).