a mystifying gap

A document such as the Hague Convention of 1 March 1954 on Civil Procedure is just the sort of thing that ought to be available on the Internet in all sorts of languages.

That is what I thought. But I was wrong.

The most recent English translation of this particular Hague Convention is apparently the Journal du Droit international (Clunet), 1960, p. 590, back before Al Gore was even a typist in Saigon.

My conclusion from this, since civil procedure has certainly evolved in the US of A since 1952--class, can you say Fuentes v. Shevin?--is that this particular convention is probably fairly useless, unlike the Hague Convention on Service Abroad, which our very own State Department has thoughtfully provided for us. In fact, State's web site is pretty good, though it won't win any prizes for its looks. The Hague people should take a leaf from State's book, although the Hague Conventions are drafted as far as I know by mysterious and shifting committees that do not stick around long enough to erect websites. I think that's another research project for another evening.