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Foreign Law
Foreign law is law that applies inside another state. For more on this concept read the Foreign Law entry from Black's Law Dictionary and Chapter 3 in the nutshell on International Legal Research.
In print the library has a fairly good collection of Mexico's codes in Spanish as well as statutes and case reporters from the UK. However, not all of these are still updated.
After reading this guide do you still have questions about Foreign Law research?
Reading
- Foreign Law, Black's Law Dictionary
The entry on Foreign Law from Black's Law Dictionary.
International Legal Research in a Nutshell by ISBN: 1634605217Publication Date: 2017Introduction to international legal research. It links to web and to print resources.
Research Guides
- Foreign Law Guide, Reynolds & Flores (Brill) This link opens in a new window
Information on sources of foreign law, including citations to legislation, the existence of English translations, and selected references to secondary resources.If you have trouble accessing this resource while on campus, then try this link.
- Foreign and International Law Research Guides (Goodson Law Library, Duke Law)
Guides on foreign and international legal research from Duke's Law Library. PDF copies of guides available. Click on “Foreign & International Materials” tab the list of research guides. - Country Research Guide: All Countries (Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School)
"This country-by-country guide will help get you started on your foreign law research by connecting you to the best research guides and databases for each country. "
Foreign & International Law Resources
eResources on Foreign & International Law
Below is a list of every electronic resource on the list of selected research databases that is tagged as having to do with foreign & International law.
- World Legal Information Institute, WLIINon-profit global legal research facility developed collaboratively by the following Legal Information Institutes and other organizations. It has link to resources on foreign and international law.
Foreign Law eResources
- Electronic Guide to Mexican Law (LLRX)A guide for researching the law of Mexico online by Francisco Avalos.
- Comparative Constitutions Project, CCPSearch, browse, and compare the constitutions of many countries. From the University of Texas.
- Biblioteca Juridica Virtual
- https://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx/bjv
- Searchable database of full text books and articles in Spanish, mostly focusing on Mexican law
- CanLII
- www.canlii.org
- Searchable database of legal materials from Canada
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- http://www.doaj.org
- Search forms available for selected non-English languages
- Can search foreign words in English query form
- Coverage of worldwide publications available for free on the Internet
- Gulf-Law
- http://gulf-law.com/
- Information on law from countries in the Persian Gulf
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- http://www.redalyc.org
- Free full text articles, primarily in Spanish
- LegiFrance
- http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/
- Law of France in french.
- SciELO
- http://scielo.org
- Mostly articles in Spanish, but some in English or Portuguese
- Includes some social science articles in full text.
Bloomberg Law, Lexis, & Westlaw
- Bloomberg Law This link opens in a new window
Bloomberg Law has material relevant to international and foreign law research. However, unlike Westlaw materials and Lexis foreign law materials, Bloomberg Law does not seem to group international and foreign materials by any general legal topic. You may search for particular resources, or you may type "international" in the go bar and see suggested practice areas and databases. - Lexis This link opens in a new window
The "International" tab on the main screen has access to foreign law materials. You may search in sources for "treaties" to find other materials as well. Lexis has slightly better coverage of foreign jurisdictions than Westlaw, with the exception of the UK.
- Westlaw This link opens in a new window
There is access to some international law and foreign law materials on Westlaw as discussed above. However, Westlaw categorize them all as "international materials." It is up to the user to determine which deal with international law and which with foreign law.
Meta
This guide was created in February 2021 from the "International, Foreign & Comparative Legal Research" guide that had been created by Bobbi Weaver in September 2010. The older guide is no longer updated, but it remains available at the above link for its wider scope and its inclusion of resources available at other libraries in San Diego.
This guide was last updated by Bobbi Weaver and Robert O'Leary in February 2021.