Foreign, Comparative, and International Legal Research

One of the preeminent reference works for researching foreign law and often the best place to start when beginning research on foreign law subjects, Foreign Law Guide provides detailed information on about 190 jurisdictions. Browsable by country or by area of law. For each country covered, introductory pages provide general information on the country’s government, legal system, and sources of law, as well as guidance on where to locate particular materials or topics for that country. Includes links to free and subscription services, primary law materials, and secondary sources. Entries for some countries include subpages for researching particular legal topics. Entries are updated regularly, though currentness varies.

A free service of the Global Law School Program at the NYU School of Law, GlobaLex consists of entries discussing research on a large number of FCIL topics. The Foreign Law Research category, for example, includes detailed entries on researching the law of about 160 jurisdictions, with background information on their governments and legal systems, detailed information on sources of law and how to find them, and links to free sources. Also includes entries covering comparative and international law research topics. Entries are regularly updated, though currentness varies.

ORIL provides “currency and coverage of public international case law, reporting on international courts, domestic courts and ad hoc tribunals.” Temple currently has subscriptions to three modules offered through ORIL: International Law in Domestic Courts, International Human Rights Law, and International Criminal Law. Once you have selected a module, you can perform faceted searches (by type of case, subject, jurisdiction, date, etc.) and can set up alerts when new cases matching your criteria are reported.

A searchable collection of databases offering the texts of international agreements from around the world from 1648–present. Includes the United Nations Treaty Series, United States treaties and agreements, agreements to which the United States is not a party, and historic materials.

Multilingual index of more than 500 foreign, comparative, and international law periodicals and more than 277,000 articles. IFLP itself is only an index—it does not include the full text of the articles—but HeinOnline includes links to some articles. (If you have difficulty finding the full text of an article you've located in IFLP, please consult a reference librarian for assistance.) Includes a searchable index for 1985-present, and a digitized version of the print edition since 1960.

A citator which searches across Oxford University Press’ law materials and selected websites on the open web.