The year 2007 was once again a year with plenty of developments in the fields of the law of war and military law and related areas of law. However, I will not attempt to give an overview here of that year. For that I refer the reader to the three-monthly Newsletters of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War (which are available, as of the 2004 issues, at http://www. soc-mil-law.org).

This year’s Review includes contributions on both the law of war and military law, as well as a number of related areas of law, some of which are written from a primarily practical perspective and some of which rather from an academic angle. We thereby hope we can contribute to a better understanding and to a more consistent interpretation, application and development of these distinct but related areas of law as well as to further the interaction between academics and practitioners. We are therefore pleased to include in the third and fourth volumes of this year’s Review two documents on the Copenhagen process on “The Handling of Detainees in International Military Operations” launched by the Legal Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark in October 2007 as well as a related article on detention.

I will not copy here the entire table of contents of the 2007 Review – there is a table of contents for that. Rather, let me just briefly provide you with a broad overview of the contents.

Volumes 1-2 consist of a single long article providing an extensive commentary on the “EU SOFA”, an agreement concluded between the European Union Member States in 2003 in the framework of the European Security and Defence Policy, which is intended to play a role similar to that of the NATO SOFA in the framework of NATO. The potential significance of this agreement, which has yet to enter into force, justifies its lengthy treatment.

The third and fourth volumes contain three articles on various topics, 4 contributions on jurisprudence and recent developments, as well as a series of book reviews; it may be recalled that the books reviewed can be consulted by members of the International Society and non members alike at the Society’s Documentation Centre at its seat in Brussels.

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to write my first editorial for this Review and I would like to particularly thank the authors, those who wrote the book reviews (including several of the Society’s interns), René Marion for the type-setting and lay-out, and the other members of the newly formed editorial board (who help ensure that the Review is now peer-reviewed):

• Laurence De Graeve (Legal advisor, Belgian Ministry of Defence);
• Ulf Häußler (Legal advisor, German armed forces);
• Stanislas Horvat (Attorney; Teaching assistant, VUB - Free University of Brussels; Vice-Director of the Review);
• Matteo Tondini (Researcher, IMT - Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies; qualified LEGAD, Italian armed forces;
  Associate member, International Institute of Humanitarian Law);
• Dr. Marten Zwanenburg (Legal advisor, Dutch Ministry of Defence).