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Foreign Law

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Researching international human rights often requires finding foreign law from various jurisdictions. For more information researching foreign legal systems, see the Researching Foreign and Comparative Law guide. Here are some useful starting points.

Also, a good starting point is the United Nations, Core Document Forming Part of the Reports of States Parties, U.N. Doc. HRI/Core/1/Add.[]/ (year). This document provides information on the general political structure of states, including basics of the legal system. See this example for the Republic of Korea, U.N. Doc. HRI/Core/1/Add. 125 (2003).

Be sure to consult a research guide for the country you are researching. A guide can help with locating legislation as well as case law. See A Selective List of Guides to Foreign Legal Research (Columbia Law Library) or Globalex (NYU Law Library) for access to country research guides.

Constitutions

Blaustein, Albert P., Constitutions of the Countries of the World (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1971-). Also available on the web (UCB only).

Web sites:

Specific Topics

Listed below are some suggested sources for specific topics. This is not an exhaustive list.

Reynolds and Flores, Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World (Littleton, CO: F.B. Rothman, 1989-). Also available on the web (UCB only).

International Labour Office, Labour Law Documents (Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Office, 1990-1995). Updated information is available on NATLEX, see next.

NATLEX: A database of national labour law.

Annual Review of Population Law (New York: United Nations Fund for Population Activities, 1997-2000). 1974-1997 are available electronically (UCB only). Also searchable on the web.

Equality in Law Between Men and Women in the European Community Series (Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1994-). Covers many jurisdictions.

A good collection of foreign law links on a variety of topics is available on the WashLaw website.

Guide to Foreign and International Legal Databases (NYU).

Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) (see Marci Hoffman or Reference Desk for assistance). The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) is a database of laws, regulations, and other complementary legal sources from various countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. The basic elements of this database are: (1) full texts of the documents in the official language of the country of origin; (2) summaries or abstracts in English; and (3) thesauri in English and in as many official languages as are represented in the database. The summaries or abstracts are linked electronically to the corresponding full texts. (Boalt only).

An Information Base on Equal Opportunity Employment for Women and Men.

International Digest of Health Legislation (World Health Organization).

Legislationline (ODIHR). Collection of national laws regarding human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and more.

Foreign & International Law Resources: An Annotated Guide to Web Sites Around the World (Harvard Law Library). Provides links to sources by topic and by jurisdiction.

Refworld Legal Collection (UNHCR). Contains selected national legislation.

Case Law

The Law Library has case law from many jurisdictions, both Commonwealth countries and Civil law countries. The titles listed below are just a few of the compilations that are available.

Bulletin on Constitutional Case Law (Strasbourg: Secretariat of the Venice Commission, 1993-). This publication contains summaries of decisions sent in by the constitutional courts or their equivalents of nearly 50 countries, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Communities. See also the Commission's website.

Commonwealth Human Rights Law Digest (London: Interights, 1996-). The Commonwealth and International Human Rights Case Law Databases is available on the Interights website. Provides access to case law from international human rights bodies and Commonwealth country courts. The web database provides summaries only.

International Human Rights Reports (Nottingham, UK: Human Rights Law Center, Department of Law, University of Nottingham, 1994-) [IHHR]. Reproduces cases from the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Committee against Torture, CERD, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter American Court of Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Yugoslav and Rwanda War Crimes Tribunals, and the Bosnian Human Rights Chamber.

International Labour Law Reports (Alphen Ann de Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1975-) [ILLR]. Reprints labor law cases from national courts.

International Law Reports (London: Butterworths). Reprints, in English, selected decisions from the highest national courts as well as international courts and tribunals.

International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC) (UCB only). A collection of domestic cases in international law from over 60 jurisdictions.

Refworld Legal Collection (UNHCR). Contains selected cases from various jurisdictions. Sorting by document type and country is available.

LexisNexis and Westlaw have some case law from selected countries (coverage varies).

Many national courts now publish case law on the web. To locate court websites, see:

This guide was prepared by Marci Hoffman, International and Foreign Law Librarian, UC Berkeley Law Library, revised January 2008.
email: webmaster-library@law.berkeley.edu Last modified on August 23, 2005.