Research Guides: Human Rights: Foreign Law

Foreign Law vs. International Law

One nation's domestic law is another nation's foreign law. Speaking from the point of view of the United States, the laws of China, France, and Nigeria are all "foreign law."
Since this guide is for students in the U.S., "foreign law" will be used to refer to the laws of countries and states outside the U.S.

Treaties, international agreements, and intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations, are all examples of public international law.
Involves laws outside the creation of a single jurisdiction.

GlobaLex: Introduction to Researching Foreign Law
This guide describes basic strategies for finding the laws of countries other than the U.S, primarily in English. The emphasis is on codes and laws rather than cases. The guide will also help you find secondary materials that describe other countries' laws. It includes links to websites and to other guides.

Foreign Law Guide
An online database continuing the reference work created by Reynolds and Flores this database provides information on sources of foreign law, including complete bibliographic citations to legislation, the existence of English translations and selected references to secondary sources. Approximately 190 jurisdictions are systemically covered.
GlobaLex Foreign Law Research
Freely available online resources for researching a country's law
WorldLII: Countries
Links to freely available websites with legal information for many of the countries of the world

LLMC Digital
Digitized collection of the Law Library Microfiche Consortium. Jurisdictions include: Canada, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Ghana, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, France, India, Oman, and the U.K. Access limited to authorized UM users (through validated sign-on).
Nations of the World
Links to foreign law documents from the Law Library of Congress.

World Constitutions Illustrated (HeinOnline)
Contains the current constitution of every country in the world (193 countries) in its original language. For countries where multiple original-language versions exist, each language is provided. At least one English translation will also be provided.