International Law Sources


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

Presented on Thursday, March 7, 2002, for the Continuing Education Committee of the Chicago Association of Law Libraries and sponsored by the Chicago Library System


Standard International Legal Reference Tools

Basic Documents of International Economic Law (ASIL; online on WESTLAW and LEXIS)(see also Documents supplements for International Law casebooks)

Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations (3d ed., 1988 - the green one)

(note also LAWLINKS's list of common Legal Abbreviations, TP-ALL, and Google)

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation

Encyclopedia of Public International Law

Restatement of the Law, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States (American Law Institute; also online on LEXIS and WESTLAW)

Thomas H. Reynolds & Arturo A. Flores, Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World (F.B. Rothman & Co.)(multi-volume looseleaf)
http://www.foreignlawguide.com/

International Legal Materials (ILM, and its predecessor, the Supplement to the American Journal of International Law)(American Society of International Law)(online on LEXIS, WESTLAW, Hein Online)

Martindale-Hubbell International Law Digest (online on LEXIS)
http://www.martindale.com/xp/Martindale/Products/Law_Digest/law_digest.xml

Modern Legal Systems Cyclopedia

Parry and Grant Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law

World Almanac

World Factbook (CIA)

Europa World Year Book (include information on legal systems, including courts and addresses, for all countries, and information on international organizations; previous title was Europa Year Book)


BREAK: Civil Code (family and domestic relations, inheritance and succession, obligations (contracts and torts), property)

Government Agencies (U.S. Department of State, Department of Commerce, USDOJ, USITC, USTR, USPTO, etc. - .gov; links to non-U.S. governments at http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govpub/resource/internat/foreign.html

IGO & NGO web pages (United Nations, European Union, World Trade Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, ILO, OECD, OAS, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc - .org, .int, .ch); links to IGOs at http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govpub/resource/internat/igo.html

LEXIS (U.S. treaties, GATT/WTO panel decisions, ILM, full texts of statutes for Australia, Argentina, Canada, Central & Eastern Europe Legal Texts, China (PRC), France, Hungary, Mexico, Russia, UK; full texts of cases for Australia, Canada, Ireland, UK, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico, Northern Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa Constitutional Law Reports, Scotland, Singapore, Brunei; European Court of Human Rights decisions (Council of Europe); European Union regulations, directives, decisions, cases; BBC; treatises)

WESTLAW (USTREATIES, GATT/WTO panel decisions (WTO-DEC), ILM, United Kingdom legal materials (Great Britain and Northern Ireland); Sweet & Maxwell publications, EU law; INT-ICJ; INT-ICTR; INT-ICTY; INT-IRAN; IACHR-OAS; NAFTA; IEL (international economic law documents); INTLENVL; Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, Russia)

Google (or your favorite other Internet search engine)
http://www.google.com/

TP-ALL (full text journals and texts database on WESTLAW - includes Practising Law Institute Course Handbooks - available separately also in the PLI database)
(or full text searches in LEXIS' LAWREV library, ALLREV file)


BREAK: Private International Law: Hague Conventions, enforcement of judgments, contracts for the international sale of goods, international commercial arbitration, conflict of laws/choice-of-law, intercountry adoption, international child abduction, taking of evidence abroad, international judicial assistance, etc.

Guides to Researching Foreign and International Law

How to Find the Law (9th ed., 1989, Cohen, Berring, & Olson)

Public International Law in a Nutshell (2d ed., 1990 has a section on "International legal research sources" at pages 243-257)

Legal Research in a Nutshell (7th ed., 2000, Cohen & Olson)(includes chapters on researching foreign and international law)

ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law
http://www.asil.org/resource/home.htm (electronic version)
http://www.asil.org/Bulletin.htm (print version)

LLRX.com: International/Foreign Law Resource Center
http://www.llrx.com/resources4.htm


BREAK: Don't forget Germain's Transnational Law Research: A Guide for Attorneys and Accidental Tourist on the New Frontier: An Introductory Guide to Global Legal Research and other print legal research guides and bibliographies

Guide to Foreign and International Legal Databases (New York University)
http://www.law.nyu.edu/library/foreign_intl/

Foreign and International Law Resources: An Annotated Guide to Web Sites Around the World (Harvard)
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/ref/ils_ref/annotated/index.htm

Legal Research on International Law Issues Using the Internet (U of Chicago)
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/forintlaw.html
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/forintlaw.html#guides

Foreign Law: Legal Research Resources on the Internet (U of Chicago)
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/foreignlaw.html

Helpful People Resources

Foreign Law Librarians (Wiltrud Harms (UN & Human Rights specialist), Claire Germain (French lawyer and law librarian), Pedro Padilla Rosa (Latin American legal materials), Francisco Avalos (Mexican Law), Jonathan Pratter (ditto), Barbara Sloan (European Union), Mirela Roznovschi and Radu Popa (Eastern Europe), Bill McCloy (East Asia), etc.)

AALL Foreign, Comparative, and International Law SIS (and FCIL-SIS listserv)
http://www.lawsch.uga.edu/fcil/fcil.html

People on electronic discussion groups such as EURO-LEX (send to listserv@listserv.dfn.de:

subscribe euro-lex Your Name
INT-LAW (send to majordomo@listhost.ciesin.org the message:
subscribe int-law
LIS-LAW, ALLG-ANZ, CALL-L, etc.) and related law librarian organizations
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/call.html
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/lawlists/lawlibs.txt
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/iall.html#other

Treaties

Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States (TIF; U.S. Department of State, Office of the Legal Adviser; annual as of January...;2000 most recent edition)
http://www.state.gov/s/l/c3431.htm
http://www.state.gov/www/global/legal_affairs/tifindex.html

Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General (annual as of December...; 2000, parts 1&2 most recent edition; lists of signatures, ratifications, accessions, etc., with full texts of reservations; online version is updated seemingly every day)
http://untreaty.un.org/ENGLISH/bible/englishinternetbible/bible.asp

Multilateral Treaties : Index and Current Status (compiled and annotated within the University of Nottingham Treaty Centre by M.J. Bowman and D.J. Harris); not online

World Treaty Index

Multilateral Treaties Project (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University)
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multilaterals.html

United Nations Treaty Collection (index and full text of bilateral and multilateral treaties; digitized version of the United Nations Treaty Series (U.N.T.S.))
http://untreaty.un.org/


BREAK: Full text sources of treaties include the United States Treaty Series (UST), Statutes at Large (Stat.), United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS), International Legal Materials (ILM), Consolidated Treaty Series (CTS), etc. as well as The Australian Treaties Library, LEXIS, WESTLAW, JSTOR (AJIL Supp.), Hein Online (AJIL Supp. & ILM), Yale's Avalon Project: Documents on Law, History, and Diplomacy (Historical Treaties), and the documents supplements to International Law casebooks

Researching U. S. Treaties and Agreements (by Marci Hoffman, Georgetown University Law Center)
http://www.llrx.com/features/ustreaty.htm

Researching Non-U. S. Treaties (by Stefanie Weigman, International Legal Studies Library at Harvard Law School)
http://www.llrx.com/features/non_ustreaty.htm

ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law: Treaties (by Jill McC. Watson)
http://www.asil.org/resource/treaty1.htm


BREAK: Indexes to journal articles on foreign, comparative, and international law include LegalTrac (aka Legal Resource Index and Current Law Index), Legal Journals Index (on WESTLAW as LJI), and Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals; full texts of articles via WESTLAW (TP-ALL, JLR), LEXIS (LAWREV), Hein Online, ProQuest, etc.

Treaties and Other International Agreements: The Role of the United States Senate (prepared by the Congressional Research Service, January 2001; S. Prt. 106-71)
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS11656 (text version)
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS11657 (PDF format)
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/

European Union, the United Nations, and the Americas

Eur-Lex (European Union legal database)
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex

CELEX
http://europa.eu.int/celex/

United Nations Documents
http://www.un.org/
http://www.unhchr.ch/

See also Yearbook of the United Nations and United Nations Documentation Research Guide: International Law

SICE: Foreign Trade Information System (OAS)
http://www.sice.oas.org/

National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade
http://www.natlaw.com/


BREAK: Foreign constitutions can be found in English translation in Constitutions of the Countries of the World, Constitutions of Dependencies and Territories, Constitutions That Made History, and in the Constitution Finder

Sources of Foreign Law in English Translation

Reynolds & Flores' Foreign Law (green looseleaf set)

Matthew-Bender's Business Transactions in Germany, Doing Business in Japan

Sweet & Maxwell's Commercial Laws of Europe, European Commercial Cases

Tax Management Portfolios - Business Operations in...

Finding Foreign Law Online When Going Global
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/global.html

Library Catalogs (especially Union catalogs)

Local Libraries:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/law/db/ref/catalogs.html

Libraries Strong for Foreign and International Law:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/forintlaw.html#catalogs

Strong FCIL Collections: Chicago and Beyond

Questions!

  1. What does GAOR stand for?
  2. How can I find an English translation of the Cuban copyright act?
  3. Where can I find out if Mexico is a party to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and when she became a party?
  4. How can I find background information on the criminal justice system of Afghanistan?
  5. Where can I get a copy of the German penal code?
  6. How can I get a copy of the recent EU merger decision re Compaq and Hewlett-Packard?
  7. How about a recent European Court of Human Rights case on the rights of gay foster parents - Frette, I think?
  8. Can I get an English translation of the French court case about a Nazi memorabilia website on Yahoo!
  9. What does CLR stand for (I have a citation to Mabo v. Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1)
  10. Where can I find the Third Geneva Convention (has something to do with prisoners of war)?
  11. Where can I find the Hague Convention on service of process?
  12. How many countries have ratified the statute on the International Criminal Court? Does the Court already exist?
  13. Where can I get a copy of the European Convention on Cybercrime?
  14. What does the "subsidiarity principle" mean (related to the European Union)?
  15. Where can I find UN Security Council resolution 1368 condemning the September 11 attacks?
  16. Where can I find the text of the labor law for Indonesia?
  17. Where can I get an English translation of the Israeli torture case?
  18. Is aggravated assault a bailable offence in Hungary?
  19. Where can I get the text of the Dutch euthanasia act?
  20. What does BISD stand for?
  21. Where can I get a copy of the Investment Law of Thailand?
  22. Where can I get the Companies Act of Barbados?
  23. Islamic law on organ transplantation?
  24. Council Directive 75/106/EEC of 19 December 1974 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the making-up by volume of certain prepackaged liquids Official Journal L 042 , 15/02/1975 P. 0001- 0013, in English?
  25. PowerPoint Presentation Questions (Canadian Association of Law Libraries presentation)