Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher

The Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher (TOAEP) furthers the objective of excellence in research, scholarship and education by publishing worldwide, in print and through the Internet. Established in 2010, it is the first open-access international law publisher. In November 2022, TOAEP as the first publisher (with its entire catalogue of publications by more than 740 authors) was certified by the Digital Public Goods Alliance as a digital public good.

Morten Bergsmo is the founder and responsible Editor-in-Chief of the Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher. TOAEP is owned by the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP), incorporated in Brussels, but TOAEP also enjoys a working office in the historic CILRAP Bottega in Florence.

All TOAEP publications can be accessed through this web site, by author name or through the page dedicated to each of the five TOAEP publication series: The Publication Series, Policy Brief Series, Occasional Paper Series, Law of the Future Series, and Nuremberg Academy Series. The publications are also available in the ICC Legal Tools Database and in Lexsitus.

TOAEP is named after late Professor Torkel Opsahl (1931-1993), a leading international and constitutional law expert in Europe from the mid-1960s until his untimely passing in the Palais des Nations in Geneva in September 1993. He was one of the early pillars of the human rights systems of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. In discussions with his oldest son, Roald Opsahl, in 1991-92, Professor Opsahl showed strong interest in the possibilities which the Internet would open for the development of international law. He dedicated the last year of his life to laying the foundation of the rise of international criminal justice as a member and, at the end, acting chairperson of the Commission of Experts for the former Yugoslavia established pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 780 (1992). TOAEP has placed international criminal and humanitarian law and issues of transitional justice at the centre of its publishing agenda.