Subject Guides: Law: Foreign & Comparative Law

Foreign & comparative law

This page of the Law Subject Guide provides information about foreign, comparative and international law resources. Links are provided to useful electronic resources for researching a foreign or compative law topic.

Legal systems

The JuriGlobe World Legal Systems website provides general information on legal systems of the world. Either use the map to navigate to a particular country or select a legal system.

JuriGlobe: World Legal Systems

Catalogues

Search YorSearch to locate books and journals on your foreign and comparative law topic. Printed materials relating to the law of other jurisdictions is located at the shelfmark J 349.

The Library of Congress and Institute of Advanced Legal Studies have both developed specialist online catalogue for foreign legal research. The provide information about where foreign legal materials are available and can be a good starting point when you are considering researching a particular jurisdiction.

FLAG
Contains collection descriptions of primary materials in print format for foreign jurisdictions held in UK libraries. Use this screen to search for either the law of a particular country or the law made by an international organisation. You can limit your search by type of information e.g. legislation, court report etc.

Government Gazettes

Government Gazettes will often provide the text of primary laws, as well as policies and decisions. Most countries will publish a gazette, but the content will vary widely.

FORUM
European Forum of Official Gazettes is a portal to the gazettes (where laws, decrees, etc are published) of many countries. Includes links to the online versions of gazettes, Collections of consolidated legislation and Legislative portals and Online databases. Covers E.U., EFTA, EU Candidate Countries & Potential EU candidate countries.
Government Gazettes Online
Directory of Government Gazettes available online produced by the University of Michigan. Government Gazettes are produced to enable the Government to communicate decisions to the public. They will often include primary legal materials. Use the A-Z navigation to link through to the country you are researching.

Constitutions

The following list provides links to some websites that provide links to the text of constitutions and related documents:

International Constitutional Law
English translations of constitutions related material. Documents are cross-references to enable quick comparison of constitutional provisions. Provides brief information about the Constitutional Background of the country.
World Consitutions Illustrated (HeinOnline)
- This link opens in a new window
This HeinOnline library includes the current constitution for every country in its original language format and an English translation, as well as substantial constitutional histories for countries such as Australia, Brazil, China, France, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and many more. It also includes constitutional periodicals, thousands of classic books, other related works such as the World Fact Book, links to scholarly articles and online resources, and bibliographic references.

Treaties

The following list provides links to online collections of treaties and indexes useful for finding and accessing multilateral and bilateral treaties.

European Treaties Series
The Council of Europe's official Treaty Office website provides the text of all Council of Europe treaties, their explanatory reports, the status of signatures and ratifications, the declarations and reservations made by States, as well as the notifications issued by the Treaty Office since 2005. Text is available in English, French, German, Italian and Russian.
FLARE Index to Treaties
Searchable database of basic information on over 1,500 of the most significant multilateral treaties from 1856 to the present, with details of where the full text of each treaty may be obtained in paper and, if available, electronic form on the Internet.
International Treaties Collection (WorldLII)
Contains the full texts of over 60,000 treaties (30,000+ from the United Nations collection). Contains both multilateral and bilateral (from numerous countries) treaties, in 27 cross-searchable databases from many sources, and from multiple jurisdictions.
United Nations Treaty Collection
Provides access to the United Nations Treaty Series and multilateral treaties that are deposited with the Secretary General.
World Treaty Index
An electronic treaty database. The database is still under development, but once fully complete, the it will feature every known international agreement in the 20th Century. This includes tens of thousands agreements entered into by hundreds of countries and international organizations. Currently, this website only contains treaties signed between 1945 and 1999. Remaining treaties are being added through 2010 and early 2011.

Dictionaries

There may be times when you cannot find an English translation of a foreign law, the Library has a collection of bilingual dictionaries in the Languages Hub on the first floor of the Harry Fairhurst Building which may be useful in these instances. You can search YorSearch to find out which language dictionaries are available.

A useful collection of online bilingual dictionaries is:

Bloomsbury World Englishes Online Encyclopaedia This link opens in a new window
Volumes 1-3 of this series, which presents a comprehensive, detailed survey of English as it is spoken all over the world and includes maps, facts and detailed descriptions for each region.

Accessibility information

Comparative law journals

The library subscribes to a number of law reviews and journals that will contain articles on comparative and foreign law topics. Listed below are some of the specialist foreign and comparative law journals that the Library subscribes to:

American Journal of Comparative Law
Published by the American Society of Comparative law this journal is devoted to comparative law, article include comparisons of the laws of one or more jurisdictions with those of another. The journal publishes feature articles by major scholars and comments by law students.
Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business
Publishes articles on topical areas of commercial law in various countries. Each volume focuses on a specific subject ranging from arbitration, company law, and consumer protection to employment law and financial law. Other topics covered include legal aspects of doing business, establishing joint ventures, civil and commercial obligations, and intellectual property issues in particular jurisdictions.
European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance
Publishes articles relating to comparative private and public law, comparative legal aspects of information technology and the methodology of comparative law.
European Journal of Legal Studies
Publishes articles on any topic of legal scholarship relating to international, comparative and European law, or legal theory.
Global Jurist
Publishes article on comparative law, law and economics, international law, law and development, and legal anthropology.
International & Comparative Law Quarterly
Journal of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. Publishes papers on public and private international law and also comparative law. Explores connections between legal subject areas across national boundaries and jurisdictions.
International Journal of Legal Information
Publication of the International association of Law Libraries. Includes bibliographies and reviews of topical interest concerning law and law-related information.
Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law
Discusses common strands in law shared by the countries of Europe. Provides analysis of EC and international law, and studies of particular problems from a comparative approach. Articles examining recent developments in an area of law in a number of European countries and case notes of important Community and national decisions of significance are also included.

Legislation

Foreign laws will often be available in translation in English, especially in areas of corporate, commercial, trade and business law. For other areas of the law it may be difficult to find English translations.

When searching for legislation you can adopt either a subject or a jurisdiction based approach. The following list provides links to some of the jurisdiction and subject collections of foreign laws:

Doing Business – Law Library
Provides access to a free online collection of business laws and regulations. Links to official government sources wherever possible. Translations are not official unless indicated otherwise. Updated regularly but the website providers do not guarantee that laws are the most recent version.
EcoLex
Information service on environmental law, produced jointly by FAO, IUCN and UNEP.The ECOLEX database includes information on treaties, non-binding policies, technical guidance documents, national legislation, judicial decisions, and law and policy literature. Abstracts and indexing information about each document is available. Most of the documents are available in full text. Use the advance search screen to improve the search functionality.
FAOLEX
Database contains treaties, laws and regulations on food, agriculture and renewable natural resources from all over the world. Most of the material in the database comes from the official gazettes. FAOLEX provides access to the abstracting and indexing information about each document, as well as a link to the full test of most legislation contained in the database. Records and summaries of the documents are provided in English.
Foreign Trade Information Systems
Portal to information on trade policy in the Americas produced by the Organization of American State's Foreign Trade Information System. You will find the full texts of trade agreements in force for OAS Member States, new and ongoing trade policy developments, information on national trade-related legislation, links to international, regional and national sources of trade policy information and more. Most documents are in Spanish, but sometimes there are English Translations available.
International Humanitarian Law Implementation Database
ICRC database of legislation, cases law and commentaries concerning the implementation of international humanitarian law at a national level. You can either browse the database by keyword or jurisdiction, or search across the database.
Legislationonline
Provides direct access to international norms and standards relating to specific human dimension issues as well as to domestic legislation and other documents of relevance to these issues. Topics covered by the database include; administrative justice, anti-discrimination, citizenship, elections, counter-terrorism, gender, migration, police, trafficking of human beings, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, access to information and data protection, death penalty, prison service, fair trial, independence of the judiciary, hate crimes, freedom of religion and national human rights laws. Some translated laws available, but it varies by jurisdiction.
Lexis Library - International Legislation
EU legislation form 1952 onwards. Provides comprehensive coverage of United States legislation and current legislation from selected countries, including Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia and South Africa.
N-Lex
Gateway to national laws, covering all EU countries. You can select which counties laws you want to search across from the menu on the right-hand side of the screen. Use the search screen to search the countries national databases for legislation. This service is still under development.
NATLEX
Database covering national labour, social security and related human rights legislation. NETLEX contains over 80,000 records covering 196 countries. Records on the database include abstracts of legislation and relevant citations information; many records also provide a link to the full-text of the law. Records are provided in English.
Westlaw International
Accessible via the Westlaw UK interface by changing the region in the top-left of the screen from UK to International. Provides access to Legislation from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and other international jurisdictions.
Women, Business and the Law
The Gender Law Library provides access to foreign legislation concerning maternity, equal pay, property rights, inheritance, and other topics impacting women’s economic status in 183 jurisdictions. The database has been produced with the aim of contributing to reforms that could enhance women’s economic rights and to facilitate comparative analysis of legislation to support research. The collection is regularly updated but there is no guarantee that the laws are the most recent version. Translations are not official unless indicated.
World Intellectual Property Organization
WIPO provides a single search facility for national laws and treaties on intellectual property. It also features related secondary information which elaborates, analyses and interprets these laws and treaties. Covers WIPO, WTO and UN Members. The documents are often translated into English. Database is searchable across jurisdictions.

Cases law

Foreign case law can be difficult to locate. Most courts will have an online presence, but coverage, dates and text availability will vary, with some countries only issuing decisions from the highest court.

Below is a selection of freely accessible and subscription resources for foreign case law:

African Human Rights Case Law Analyser
Freely accessible multilingual collection of African human rights decisions developed by the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS). Provides access to the full-text of all decisions from the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in English.
Institute for Foreign Law Translations
This site provides English translations of decisions from French, German, Austrian and Israeli in the fields of constitutional, administrative, contract and tort law. Some English translations of French and German statutes are also provided.
International Legal Materials
Reproduces documents reflecting the broad scope and evolution of international law. Each issue contains the full text of important treaties and agreements, judicial and arbitral decisions, national legislation, international organization resolutions, and other primary documents. In addition, all documents are headed by analytical introductory notes written by legal experts and scholars. *Most recent 2 years not available.*
Law-Cite
Freely accessible international legal case and journal citator developed by the AustLII. Law-Cite can be used to locate judgements and to see how these have been subsequently dealt with and commented upon. There are currently 4,353,089 indexed cases, law reform documents and journal articles included in the system.
Lexis Library - International Cases
Provides comprehensive coverage of United States and Canada case law. Also includes case law from other jurisdictions including Hong Kong (1947-), Malaysia (1955-), New Zealand (1958-), South Africa (1920-), and Singapore (1965-).

Economic and social data sources

When researching a foreign jurisdiction you may want to find some general statistics and background information to contextualise your study, for example, population size, conviction rate, religious beliefs etc. Statistical evidence can inform the conclusions you draw regarding economic, social and political conditions in the past and present.

Links to some quick reference and international data sets are provided below. For more information about finding data sources see the Statistics page.

CIA World Factbook

Annual almanac of country profiles primarily to support US foreign policy institutions. Only the current year’s data is available. Country ranking data (i.e. fourth highest population in the world) is provided for many variables. Free-to-access on the CIA's website.
OECD Factbook

Published annually by the OECD to collate economic and social data about member states and additional major countries. Summary data is presented in tables which can also be downloaded as Excel spreadsheets. Approx. 10 years’ historical data in most cases.

UK Data Service This link opens in a new window
Not just UK Data, information about other countries also available.
Consolidates and integrates four services established and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC): the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), the Secure Data Service, the Survey Question Bank and elements of the ESRC Census Programme.

The UK Data Service provides a unified point of access to more than 6,000 collections of high quality social and economic data, including UK Census data, government-funded surveys, longitudinal studies, international macrodata, qualitative data and business microdata.

For help with this resource, take a look at our Quick Guide.

Accessibility information

Subject guides & portals

Subject guides provide a good starting point for foreign legal research. They provide links to useful resources, may of which are freely available online. The following list includes some of the most useful subject guides and portals:

Eagle-i: Electronic access to global legal information
Internet portal for law developed by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. Provides links to high quality legal information sources on the internet. Contains over 4,500 resource records coverage UK, European, Foreign, Comparative and International law. You can conduct a simple search for keywords in the record titles and descriptions; searches can be filtered by jurisdiction and/or resource type.
GlobaLex
Published by the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law and written by leading scholars. GlobaLex provide research tools for international, foreign, and comparative law. GlobaLex are continuing to expand the range of guides to cover international law topics, countries and legal systems. Their aim is to provide a coherent and encompassing research tool for all constituencies.
LLRX Comparative & Foreign Law Guides
Provides many guides on researching foreign jurisdictions, including Argentina, Canada, China, Germany, and Israel. Guides provide an overview of the legal materials for each country and information about accessing English translations.