Human Rights:
An Interdisciplinary
Bibliography and Research Guide
The present work, Human
Rights: An Interdisciplinary Bibliography and Research Guide ((http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/humanrights.html) is a project for the Human Rights
Program of the Center for International Studies of the University of Chicago. It is intended to provide a guide to core resources in human rights-related disciplines and how to access and use them.
Created January 19, 2001. Updated 27 April 2004. Sources compiled by Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Foreign and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School, D'Angelo Law Library (DLL).
General Human Rights Research Strategies
A general tenet of research is not to duplicate effort. Do not reinvent the wheel. In which case, a useful beginning research strategy is to see if someone else already has done the work for you. Is there already a book or journal article on the topic? How up-to-date is it? What is the quality of the existing work? Make sure to search by country and region, and look for materials in different languages and from different perspectives. Look out for bias, and try to get a balanced view from the resources found.
Is there someone else working in the area? "People" resources are
very important in human rights work, so the researchers should look
for individuals working in the field, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), and national
governmental bodies, and their work products. These can include
useful compilations of documents, statistics, journals, conferences,
etc. And it is very important to be current - monitor developments in
the field as close to the present day as possible. This involves
reading the periodical literature as well as newspapers and press
releases. And the information can be in multiple formats -
hardcopy/print, microform, electronic (databases, CD-ROMs, the
Internet, etc.). And, with electronic mailing lists, you can get
human rights information delivered daily directly to your mailbox!
Another tenet is to act locally. Look to see what resources exist in your school, your city, your state first, before consulting externally. Ask yourself -
what organizations, government agencies, embassies, consulates, libraries, faculty, research centers, etc. work in this field? Are there any directories where they are listed (print and electronic)? Perhaps they have a web site? Perhaps they are in the phone book?
And if you've exhausted local resources, there are federal government agencies to contact, national and international organizations, and people generally. Listservs and newsgroups are sources that can sometimes be used to find information, especially after calling people and searching the Internet.
And for human rights, the resources are widely available. It is just a matter of finding them!
Human Rights: General Background Sources
- Thomas Buergenthal, International Human Rights in a
Nutshell (3d ed., 2002). D'Angelo Law Library Reserve Reading Room. XXK3240.4.B842 2002.
- Guide to International Human Rights Practice (Hurst Hannum ed.,
3d ed., 1999). D'Angelo Law Library Reserve Reading Room. XX3240.4.G942 1999.
- Other
Background Materials
Human Rights: Major Starting Points
- Links
and Resources (Human Rights Program, Center for International
Studies, University of Chicago)(http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/links.html)
- Human
Rights Resources (Lyonette Louis-Jacques, University of
Chicago)(http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/forintlaw.html#humanrights)
- International Human Rights (American Society of International Law (ASIL) Electronic Information System for International Law (EISIL))(http://www.eisil.org/index.php?sid=364794688&t=sub_pages&cat=185)
- United
Nations Documentation Research Guide: Special Topics: Human
Rights (Dag Hammarskjold Library)(http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/spechr.htm)
- ASIL Guide to
Electronic Resources for International Law: Human Rights (Marci
Hoffmann, American Society of International Law)(http://www.asil.org/resource/humrts1.htm)
- Margarita Lacabe, Concise Guide
to Human Rights on the Internet (Derechos Organization, 2d
ed., 1998)(http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/manual.htm)
- University of Minnesota
Human Rights Library (http://www.umn.edu/humanrts/)(includes links to decisions of international bodies related to human rights including decisions of the UN Human Rights Committee)
- Project DIANA: An Online Human Rights Archive at Yale Law School (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diana/)
- Human & Constitutional Rights (Columbia University Law Library)
- New Rights - New Laws (rights-based research on the Internet; focuses on human rights issues of transitional societies and Africa; Lyonette Louis-Jacques)
- Derechos Human Rights
Organization (includes links to Human Rights
Mailing Lists)(http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/lists/)
- Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR)(http://www.unhchr.ch/)(human rights decisions under treaty-body and charter-based "Documents")
- Human Rights Internet (HRI,
Canada; publishes For the Record: The UN Human Rights System
online annually)(http://www.hri.ca/)
- Human Rights Watch (HRW)
- Amnesty International (AI)
- Google (Internet search engine)(http://www.google.com/; used the "Advanced Search" feature to limit by date, language, place in page such as "title", format such as PDF; use quotations around phrases and titles of documents such as "human rights")
Off-Campus Access to Subscription Databases
For resources that the University Libraries subscribe to (fee-based or $),
you may need to connect
(http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/db/connect.html) to them using the campus proxy
server (http://www-neteng.uchicago.edu/Docs/web-proxy.html) if you
are not accessing them via the University network.
Treaties, Conventions, and Other International Human Rights Instruments
- D'Angelo Law Library: strong print collection of treaty series for the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany. Also treaties for the Council of Europe, the United Nations, the League of Nations, the Consolidated Treaty Series (CTS), International Legal Materials (ILM), the European Union, the Organization of American States (OAS), etc. U.S. treaties via LexisNexis, WESTLAW, LexisNexis Academic Universe, and Hein-On-Line.
- International Human Rights
Instruments (UNHCHR; includes status of ratifications and
declarations and reservations)(http://www.unhchr.ch/html/intlinst.htm)
- Treaties and
Other International Instruments (University of Minnesota Human
Rights Library)(http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/treaties.htm)
- U.S. Treaties and International Agreements (Hein-On-Line, subscription database; includes treaty indexes)(http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Index?collection=ustreaties) $
- United Nations Treaty Series (United Nations Treaty Collection, subscription database)(http://untreaty.un.org/) $
- International Legal Materials (ILM; via LexisNexis Academic Universe: "International Legal Materials: Provides the full texts of important treaties and agreements, judicial and arbitral decisions, national legislation, international organizations resolutions and other documents") $
- Multilateral
Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General (near daily updates
on the status of ratifications of treaties; includes declarations and reservations)(http://untreaty.un.org/ENGLISH/bible/englishinternetbible/bible.asp)
Domestic/Foreign Law: Constitutions, Cases, Statutes, Treaties (U.S. and Non-U.S.)
- D'Angelo Law Library (strong print collection of laws of common law countries (U.S., U.K., Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong), civil law countries (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Italy, etc.); also Israel, Japan. Also U.S. and foreign law via LexisNexis, WESTLAW, and LexisNexis Academic Universe. DLL's collection is complemented by Romance-language country collections at Northwestern University Law Library downtown (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal), the Africana Collection at Northwestern University in Evanston (the NUcat enables you to "Choose More Limits" and limit your search to the Africana Collection; includes law-related materials for Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, etc; codes and other statutory compilations, case reports, monographs), the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) for foreign official gazettes, newspapers, and dissertations, and other U of C campus libraries)
- Constitutions of the countries of the world; a series of updated texts, constitutional chronologies and annotated bibliographies (edited by A. P. Blaustein and G. H. Flanz, Oceana Publications). D'Angelo Law Library, Reserve Reading Room. XXK3157.E5B538.
- Constitutions of dependencies and territories (edited by Philip Raworth). D'Angelo Law Library, Reserve Reading Room. XXK3157.E5C663.
- Legal Research (LexisNexis Academic Universe: U.S. statutes, regulations, cases; European Union Law (CELEX); Commonwealth and Foreign Nations Case Law, digests, report, treaties and international agreements including Canada, Ireland, Australia, Mexico, GATT, Hong Kong, UK, South Africa) $
- Foreign Law Databases by Jurisdiction (Mirela Roznovschi; includes free websites for full texts of non-U.S. laws)
- Legal Research Guides for Over 50 Countries (LLRX.com Comparative/Foreign Resource Center)
- Foreign Law: Legal Research Resources on the Internet (Lyonette Louis-Jacques)
- Criminal Law Resources on the Internet (includes full texts of foreign penal/criminal codes, including in English translation)
- Annual Review of Population Law (1974-1997 via Hein-On-Line $); on the Internet as a free database from 1974 to date (2004)(a database of summaries and excerpts of legislation, constitutions, court decisions, and other official government documents from every country in the world relating to population policies, reproductive rights and health, women's status and rights, children and adolescents, HIV/AIDS, abortion laws, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, and related topics)
- United States Legal Research
- Legifrance (French official government portal to statutes (lois), cases (jurisprudence), etc.)
- British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII)
- Canadian Legal Information Institute (CANLII)
- Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)
- Juridat (Belgian jurisprudence/case-law and legislation in Dutch (Nederlands) and French; see also Katholieke Universiteit Leuven's "E-sources - Belgium" page)
- Law Web Saarbrücken (German official federal law gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt), cases, statutes, etc.)
- Germany (links to German legal materials via Lyo's "Foreign Law" page)
Other Human Rights Documents (Reports, Decisions, Cases, Etc.
- United Nations
Documents (University of Minnesota Human Rights
Library)(http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/un-orgs.htm)
- Jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (decisions and views rendered pursuant to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) back to 1985; for example, Ivan Kitok v. Sweden, Communication No. 197/1985,
U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/33/D/197/1985 (1988))
- United Nations Human
Rights Documents (UNHCHR)(http://www.unhchr.ch/data.htm)(includes documents of the Human Rights Committee (CCPR) in the "Treaty Body Database" and other UN Committees; note that you can search by UN Document Symbol to call up full texts of documents)
- Treaty Body Database: Documents of the following bodies:
CAT-Committee against Torture
CCPR-Human Rights Committee
CEDAW-Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women
CERD-Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
CESCR-Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
CMW-Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families
CRC-Committee on the Rights of the Child
- Charter-Based Bodies Database: Documents of the following:
Commission on Human Rights (E/CN.4)
Economic and Social Council
General Assembly
Secretariat
Security Council
Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
(E/CN.4/Sub.2/)
- United Nations (resolutions of the General Assembly (back to 1946), ECOSOC (back to 1982), Security Council (back to 1946), reports,
etc. via the UN Documentation Centre page)(http://www.un.org/documents/)
- International Law Documents (United Nations law-related bodies - ICTY, ICTR, ICC, ILC, etc.)(http://www.un.org/law/index.html)
- Official Document System of the United Nations (ODS)(full PDF texts of all documents back to around the mid-1990s) $
- International Human Rights Reports (IHHR; decision of United Nations and other international human rights bodies). D'Angelo Law Library Stacks. XXK3239.23.I58.
- Decisions and Reports (European Commission of Human Rights; D. & R.; from 1975-1997). D'Angelo Law Library Stacks. KD19.C8A2551.
- European Human Rights Reports (EHHR)(decisions of the Eurpean Commission on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR); also available on WESTLAW). D'Angelo Law Library Stacks. KD5.E9085.
Country Reports
General Country and Human Rights News and Information Sources
Periodicals, Newsletters, Working Papers, Conference Proceedings, Books
- International and Non-U.S. Law Journals (via Hein-On-Line) $
- Law Journals Database (via Hein-On-Line) $
- Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) $
- Books via WorldCat, RLG Union Catalog/RLIN, Dissertation Abstracts $
- All-European Human Rights Yearbook
- Australian Journal of Human Rights
- Buffalo Human Rights Law Review
- Columbia Human Rights Law Review
- East European Human Rights Review
- European Human Rights Law Review
- Harvard Human Rights Journal
- Health and Human Rights
- Human Rights (journal of the Section of Individual
Rights and Responsibilities of the American Bar Association)
- Human Rights and Constitutional Law Journal of Southern Africa
- Human
Rights Brief (newsletter of the Washington College of Law at
American University Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian
Law)(http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/)
- Human Rights Dialogue
- Human Rights in Development Yearbook
- Human Rights Information Bulletin (Council of Europe)
- Human Rights Law Journal (HRLJ)
- Human Rights Quarterly. JC571.U64 Law, JRL. Available online in full text via
Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_rights_quarterly/. $
See also Advanced
Search page. Also available via JSTOR (v.1-16 (1979-1994)). $
- Human Rights Review
- Human Rights Tribune = Tribune des droits humains
n
- International Journal of Children's Rights
- International Journal of Discrimination and the Law
- International Journal of Human Rights
- International Journal on Minority and Group Rights
- Israel Yearbook on Human Rights
- Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
- New York Law School Journal of Human Rights
- Review (International Commission of Jurists)
- South African Human Rights Yearbook
- South African Journal on Human Rights
- Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal
- Law Journals and Indexes (Hein-On-Line, JSTOR, LexisNexis Academic Universe (law reviews), LegalTrac or Legal Resource Index (LRI), Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP), Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP), etc.)
- Non-Law Journals and Indexes (PAIS
International, UnCover, Web of Science (Arts & Humanities Index and
Social Science Citation Index), Periodicals Contents Index, MedLine,
PubMed
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed); see also
full text resources such as ProQuest Direct and JSTOR and Project
MUSE; other resources are available via the University Libraries' Electronic Resources page)(http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/db/)
Human Rights in Africa
Human Rights in the Americas
Human Rights in Asia
Human Rights in Europe
Human Rights in the Middle East
Human Rights: Special Topics
D'Angelo Law Library
The D'Angelo Law
Library is located at 1121 East 60th Street (across the Midway
from Harper Library, between Woodlawn and Ellis Avenues); the
reference staff can be reached by phone at 773-702-9631 and in person
on the Second Floor of the Law Library. It is good to begin your
research by asking for help at the Reference Desk. See also the D'Angelo Law Library Guide for Law Journal Students. Some core sources
to use include LegalTrac
which indexes over 900 law journals and newspapers from common law
countries from 1980 to date. $ Its online
equivalent is the Legal Resource Index available via the LexisNexis
(LAWREV library and LGLIND file) and WESTLAW (LRI
database) legal databases. $ See also the Index to Legal Periodicals and Books. $ Non-law students and faculty have access
to another flavor of LexisNexis called LexisNexis Academic
Universe (http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/) via campus library terminals and off-campus via the University connectivity package and proxy server. Academic Universe includes mostly the same library of cases, statutes, regulations as LexisNexis for Law Schools except for selected sources of international treaties, European Court of Human Rights decisions, and French legal materials. $
The LexisNexis service includes the full text of U.S. federal and
state court cases, statutes, and regulations, plus the full text of
articles from several hundred law journals from about the mid-1980s to date,
as well as worldwide news stories. $
For foreign and international - in the INTLAW library of the
Law School flavor of LexisNexis, you can find selected international treaties, and legal documents of the European Union,
Australia, Canada, the UK, Hungary, France, Russia, Mexico, Scotland,
Ireland, Northern Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and selected
other materials. As well as the Council of Europe's European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) cases.
Copies of the LexisNexis Directory of Online Services and the Westlaw Databases Directory are available to review. Ask at the D'Angelo Law Library Reference Desk. 2-9631.
WESTLAW includes similar materials, especially UK, Mexican, and
Canadian cases, and European Union materials as well as European human
rights decisions. WESTLAW's full text journals database includes foreign and international journals published in the United States. $
There are many more resources available for human rights research.
The author would be happy to hear about the resources you find useful
in your work. Please contact her directly at llou@midway.uchicago.edu.
Prepared by Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Foreign and International Law
Librarian and Lecturer in Law, D'Angelo Law Library, University of
Chicago Law School, llou@midway.uchicago.edu,
1-773-702-9612; fax: 1-773-702-2889. See generally, Legal Research
of International Law Issues Using the Internet (http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/forintlaw.html)