Legal Research Page

Table of Contents

• Sample Pages
• Selected Major Web Sites
  • ESIL: Electronic Information System for International Law (ASIL database)
  • Lex Mercatoria: International Trade/Commercial Law Monitor
• International Organizations
  • International Criminal Court
• Government Agencies
• Miscellaneous Other Sites
  • Human Rights Resources
  • Women in International Law
  • International Economic Law
  • Global Trade Negotiations
  • Private International Law
  • European & Comparative Private Law Page
  • Hague Conference on Private International Law
  • International Commercial Arbitration (Charlotte Bynum)
  • International Commercial Arbitration (Lyonette Louis-Jacques)
  • International Commercial Arbitration (Jean Wenger)
• International Law Conferences/Events Calendars
• Publishers and Vendors
• Databases
• Library Catalogs
• Online Bookstores
• Journals and Periodical Indexes
  • Contents Pages from Law Reviews
  • Selected International Law E-Journals and Newsletters
• Major Electronic Discussion Groups
  • International Law Lists
• Discussion Group Archives
  • Lyo's Law Lists
• International Legal News Sources
• Directories
• Research Centers, Institutes, Schools, and Working Papers
• Research Guides
  • Researching International Law on the Internet (ASIL Guide)
  • WTO/GATT Research (see Update)
  • Foreign & International Guides: World Trade Organization
  • The United Nations System Pathfinder
  • United Nations Documentation Research Guide: International Law
  • Guide to International and Foreign Legal Databases
  • International Economic Law
  • Researching International Economic Law
  • Eye on International Business Law
  • Researching Intellectual Property Law in an International Context (see also update)
  • Guide to International Trade Law Sources on the Internet (see also update)
  • The Transnational Law Digest & Bibliography (TLDB)
  • ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources on International Law
    
    
    

Sample Pages

• International Trade and Customs Law (Riggle & Craven, Chicago, IL)
• International Trade and Customs Law (Wasserman, Schneider & Babb, New York)
• International Law Section (California Bar Association - includes links to other international law sites of interest to practitioners)
• California Council for International Trade (CCIT)
• Federal Register (via University of California's GPO Gate, a WWW interface to GPO Access, links to document databases of the U.S. Government Publications Office; for early information on proposed agency rules and regulations, full texts, notices of hearings, deadlines for comments, etc., daily)
• Helms-Burton Law (Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 (H.R. 927; S. 381)(enacted March 12, 1996, P.L. 104-114, 110 Stat. 785, 22 U.S.C. Sect. 6021 et. seq.)); available as a Public Law from THOMAS: U.S. Legislative Information on the Internet
• D'Amato Amendment (Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 (H.R. 3107;S.1228 related)(enacted August 5, 1996, P.L. 104-172, 110 Stat. 1541, 50 U.S.C. Sect. 1701 note, reprinted in 35 ILM 1273 (Sept. 1996)))
• National Foreign Trade Council v. Natsios (United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, No. 98-2304, June 22, 1999)(The state of Massachusetts law restricting the ability of state to purchase goods or services from individuals or companies that engage in business in Myanmar ("Burma Law") held an unconstitutional interference with the foreign relations power of the Executive Branch and with the authority of Congress to regulate foreign commerce, and violative of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution as preempted by federal sanctions against Myanmar)
• Lex Mercatoria: International Trade/Commercial Law Monitor (Norway) (seeking World Trade Organization panel report? - perhaps start directly at http://www.wto.org/wto/dispute/distab.htm)
• Lyo's Law Lists (client is female refugee seeking asylum in the U.S. as fears gender-based persecution if return to her country; listserv best starting point for getting information and documents (ASYLUM-L, IMMPROF, FEMJUR, etc.)? - no, suggest start with web site, if not print resources first - INS, UNHCR, etc.)
• Adobe Acrobat (free Reader available for downloading to read documents served as PDF files at international law sites)
• BabelFish (Altavista Search Engine's page for translating texts to English; see also Google, InterTran (tm), and REGARDE; caveat - be careful when using these translations, especially for legal materials - among other things, dictionaries might not include legal terms)
• Eurodicautom (a polyglot dictionary provided by the EU Translation Service; includes Law terms for multiple European languages)
  

Selected Major Web Sites

• ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law (ERG; see especially the guide to "Researching International Law on the Internet"; Marci Hoffman & Jill Watson eds.)
• LLRX.com Resource Center: International/Foreign Law (includes foreign and international research guides and links; Marci Hoffman & Mirela Roznovschi eds.)
• Harvard University Law School Library International Legal Studies (see the ILS Foreign and International Law Resources: An Annotated Guide to Web Sites Around the World page and other Research Guides)
• University of Maryland Thurgood Marshall Law Library (The International and Foreign Law Pages)
• New York University School of Law Library (see also related Guide to European Legal Databases and update)
• Leiden University Faculty of Law Library
• JurWebb (Law on the Internet, Stockholm University Library)
• Public International Law (Francis Auburn, The University of Western Australia)
• American Society of International Law (Springboard page)
• Transnational Law Database (CENTRAL; Transnational Commercial Law - The New Lex Mercatoria:
  

  For each principle and rule, the TLDB provides the user with the black
  letter text and comprehensive references taken from international 
  arbitral awards, domestic statutes, international conventions,
  standard contract forms, trade practices and usages, other sample
  clauses and academic sources. All of these sources are, as far as
  possible, presented in full text versions.
  

• Lex Mercatoria: International Trade/Commercial Law Monitor (University of Tromsø and University of Oslo, Norway and Pace University School of Law, White Plains, NY; Ralph Amissah editor; alternate URLs are http://www.lexmercatoria.org/ and http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/index.html; includes full texts of documents related to International Economic Law; was called the International Trade Law Monitor and the International Trade Law Project until May 1999)
• International Law and Human Rights (Chris Ingelse, University of Maastricht; includes European Court of Human Rights)
• Informations Juridiques sur Internet (Université Catholique de Louvain, Faculté de Droit)
• Jurweb: Legal Information in the Internet (Myroslav Munzer, University of Bayreuth)
• LexUM (Virtual Canadian Law Library, University of Montreal; includes links to the Canada Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB); see also their Juris International - International Business Lawyer page of links)
• Law Lists: Legal and Non-Legal WWW Resources for Canadian Lawyers (Judith Bower)
• University of Chicago, D'Angelo Law Library (U.S., including Federal Register, War Crimes, national constitutions and constitutional courts, and other foreign and international law resources)
• International Law (Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Library)
• ForInt-Law (Washburn University Law School)
• Droit international public (Denis Le May, Bibliothèque de l'Université de Laval; public international law - page in French; includes a page on the "Nations Unies/United Nations)
• Guide to Law Online(U.S. Law Library of Congress)(includes link to GLIN, the Global Legal Information Network, index and abstracts of national legislation, particularly of Spanish-speaking countries; see alternate GLIN home page)
• Legal Information Institute (Cornell; see particularly the LII's Law from around the World page)
• World Wide Web Virtual Library for Law (Indiana)
• WashLaw WEB (Washburn University School of Law mega-law site, including their Foreign and International Law page)
• Australasian Legal Information Institute (see International Law page of AustLII's World Law Index)
• Hieros Gamos (Lex Mundi's law links page; see especially the Guide to International Law page)
• FindLaw (law-specific index to Internet resources)
• Yahoo "Law" links (catalog of Internet resources)
• Social Science Information Gateway: Law (see also SOSIG's International Law and International Relations pages)
  
  

International Organizations

• United Nations (UN Charter, Statute of the ICJ, resolutions, reports, and other key documents; the Dag Hammarskjöld Library (DHL); also link to the very current United Nations Treaty Collection On-Line (was the UN Treaty Data Base at http://www.un.org/Depts/Treaty/), which updates the annually-published treaty status & index set, Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, weekly, and includes the full text of multilateral and bilateral treaties published in the U.N.T.S.)
• UN Organizational Chart (hypertext; see also ASCII gopher chart of the UN System)
• UNBISnet (UN library catalog page including index to Voting Records and Speeches)
• UN-I-QUE (United Nations Info Quest; "a database created by the Dag Hammarskjøld Library to provide quick access to document symbols/sales numbers for UN materials (1946 onwards); it does not give full bibliographic details nor does it replace existing bibliographic databases (UNBIS, UNBIS Plus on CD-ROM) produced by the Library; UN-I-QUE focuses upon documents and publications of a recurrent nature: annual/sessional reports of committees/commissions; monographic series; journals; annual publications; reports periodically/irregularly issued; reports of major conferences; statements in the General Debate; etc.")
• AccessUN (Readex United Nations Index - of UN documents and publications from 1966 to date; subscription service)
• UN Resolutions and Other Documents (full texts via the UN Documentation Centre)
• UN Security Council Resolutions (full text from 1946 to date)
• UN General Assembly Resolutions (full text from 1977 to date)
• UN Economic and Social Council Resolutions (full text from 1982 to date)
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP Gopher provides full texts of General Assembly (GA) Resolutions from the 36th to 49th Sessions, Security Council (SC) Resolutions from 1974 to 1996, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Resolutions from 1982 to 1994 under "United Nations Documents", and many other useful documents and information on the United Nations generally)
• United Nations Global Statistics
• Cour Internationale de Justice = International Court of Justice (ICJ official web site; includes Statute, judgments, advisory opinions, orders, press communiques/releases (on the "What's New" page))
• International Court of Justice 1946-1996 (50th Anniversary guide to the ICJ online - e-book)
• International Court of Justice (ICJ at Cornell University Law School; official U.S. mirror web site; includes Statute, judgments, advisory opinions, orders; see also the World Court Project and the NGO Committee on Disarmament's World Court Excerpts - "Verbatim Excerpts of Oral Statements to the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons" (1995))
• Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA official web site; includes documents related to the Eritrea-Yemen Arbitration)
• Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA at Cornell University Law School)
• International Criminal Court (UN's ICC web site; see also resource page with links to Internet resources and print publications on the ICC)
• International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR; war crimes; was at http://www.ictr.org/)
• International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY; war crimes)
• Final Report Commission Of Experts Established Pursuant To Security Council Resolution 780 (1992) (the UN Commission of Experts on Former Yugoslavia's Final Report is appended to the "Letter dated 24 may 1994 from the Secretary-General to the President of the Security Council", S/1994/674)
• International Law Commission (ILC)
• United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network (UNCJIN; includes documents related to the UN Draft Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime)
• United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNCRI)
• United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR)
• Treaty Bodies Database (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; includes General Comments, Reports, etc.; see also short URLs format)
• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (includes links official documents of the UNHCR and national legal information via REFWORLD)
• International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; includes database and CD-ROM with full texts of treaties, rules, commentaries on International Humanitarian Law (IHL); see also the People on War Project campaign page to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions and Humanitarian Web Sites)
• The War-Torn Societies Project (WSP; includes searchable bibliographic database of policy documents and evaluation reports as well as research reports and articles from various multilateral and bilateral agencies, research institutes and academics; "A specialized, annotated listing of literature from around the world", including materials on women's rights)
• Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict = Instituts für Friedenssicherungsrecht und Humanitäres Völkerrecht (IFHV, Ruhr-University Bochuml; includes European Master's Degree Programme in Human Rights and Democratization and list of the Bochumer Schriften zur Friedenssicherung und zum Humanitären Völkerrecht publication series)
• ReliefWeb (information service for the Humanitarian Relief Community; ReliefWeb is a project of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA))
• World Trade Organization (WTO; includes dispute settlement news and reports; see also the WTO and U.S. Official websites for the Third Ministerial Conference, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., 30 November-3 December 1999)
• World Trade Organization: Panel Decisions
• WorldTradeLaw.net ("The Online Source for World Trade Law"; enables full text search of GATT/WTO Panel and Appellate Body reports)
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO treaties are at http://www.wipo.org/eng/iplex/index.htm; includes link to CLEA database (Collection of Laws for Electronic Access)
• International Labor Organization (ILO; see also official U.S. mirror web site at Cornell; includes links to ILO's NATLEX database of national labor legislation abstracts and bibliographies (also at http://natlex.ilo.org/), Legislative Information (monthly bulletin summarizing labor and employment laws worldwide), ILOLEX (database of international labor standards, conventions, etc.), and other labor databases; see also Washington Branch Office and ILO Watch)
• FAO Legal Office (Food and Agriculture Organization; includes links to legal texts, FAO Legal Papers Online, legislative studies publications, and FAOLEX (database indexing worldwide legislation on food, agriculture, land tenure, etc.), and FISHLEX (database of coastal requirements for foreign fishing or national fisheries law)
• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP; see also the IUCN-World Conservation Union Environmental Law Programme joint project, the ECOLEX database of national environmental legislation)
• European Patent Office (EPO)
• European Union (EU EUROPA page including full texts of EU Treaties, Green Papers and links to bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, policy instruments, and other documents)
• Task Force for Accession Negotiations (European Commission)
• Justice and Home Affairs (includes Cooperation in electronic commerce, asylum, organized crime, policing, preventing in trafficking in drugs, human beings, etc.)
• European Parliament Home Page
• Research Newsletter (DG4 papers; European Parliament)
• Legislative Observatory (OEIL, European Parliament)
• European Union Law Page (EUR-Lex; EU treaties, legislation, ECJ case-law)
• Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ cases in EU all languages; formerly at http://europa.eu.int/cj/index.htm)
• Library, Research, and Documentation (Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ) page with full text of the Brussels Convention and the Lugano Convention and related case-law, Digest of Community Case-Law, Index A-Z (numerical and alphabetical index of cases before the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance since 1953), alphabetical index of subject matter of legal issues, ECJ case annotations)
• CELEX (EU treaties, legislation (regulations, directives, decisions), preparatory acts, COM documents, parliamentary questions, case-law, etc. database; need password to access)
• Official Journal of the European Communities (OJ Legislation (L) and Information and Notices (C) series)
• Bulletin of the European Union (Bull EC; European Commission)
• Directory of Community Preparatory Acts (analytical index, but includes some full texts of COM Documents, e.g., Commision Proposal - COM(97)0093 final)
• COM Documents (list and full text from the OJ C Series)
• Official Documents, Reports (full texts of annual reports such as Better Law-Making, Report on Competition Policy, Report on Monitoring the Application of Community Law, General Report on the Activities of the European Union, Fight Against Fraud, etc.)
• EUR-OP (Office for Official Publications; includes EUR-OP News)
• European Union Policies (citations to national implementing measures - via SCAD Plus)
• Fundamental Rights (Council of the European Union)
• Directorates-General (DGsEuropean Union)
• Treaty of Nice (UK Command Paper containing the Treaty of Nice; PDF file)
• Treaty of Amsterdam (done at Amsterdam on 16-17 June 1997, signed on 2 October 1997, European Commission Doc. CONF/4001/97, O.J. Eur. Comm. C 340/1 (1997), 37 I.L.M. 56 (1998)(International Legal Materials), 1997 BDIEL AD LEXIS 15 (Basic Documents of International Economic Law), pending ratification by all EU member states, not yet in force as of 13 May 1998)
• Amsterdam Treaty `98 (Irish Government, Referendum Commission)
• Irish Presidency's Draft Treaty Document (The European Union Today and Tomorrow)
• Schengen Agreement (unofficial English text)(related pages at http://www.adminet.com/jo/schengen.html and http://europa.eu.int/en/agenda/schengen.html; see also Resolution on the functioning and future of Schengen, OJ C 115/30 (April 14, 1997); also available in Italian; see also The Netherlands and the Schengen Agreement (July 1998) and Claus Thiery, The Schengen Agreements)

  BELGIUM-FRANCE-FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY-LUXEMBOURG-NETHERLANDS: SCHENGEN AGREEMENT ON THE GRADUAL ABOLITION OF CHECKS AT THEIR COMMON BORDERS AND THE CONVENTION APPLYING THE AGREEMENT 30 International Legal Materials (I.L.M.) 68, 116 (1991)(the Agreement of 14 June 1985 is at 30 I.L.M. 73-83 (1991) and the Convention applying the Agreement of 19 June 1990 is at 30 I.L.M. 84-147 (1991)).

• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• Council of Europe (CoE news, texts adopted, conventions, and other info, including a list of ratifications of treaties by state at http://www.coe.fr/eng/legaltxt/treaties.htm; was at http://www.coe.fr/ which still works; see also Guide to Researching the Council of Europe).
• Committee of Ministers (Council of Europe; includes steering and ad hoc committees)
• Human Rights Web (Council of Europe, Directorate of Human Rights, including the Human Rights Information Bulletin)
• Human Rights Web (Council of Europe's Human Rights Web Site at http://www.humanrights.coe.int/ - replaces http://www.dhdirhr.coe.fr/?)
• Minority Issues (Council of Europe, Directorate General of Human Rights, Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and of the DH-MIN)
• European Commission of Human Rights (ECommHR; includes reports; the Commission no longer exists)
• European Court of Human Rights (ECHR/CEDH judgments, press releases, basic texts, etc., including the HUDOC database containing the full text of judgments of the Court, decisions and reports of the Commission and resolutions of the Council of Ministers from 1959 to last month; was at http://www.dhcour.coe.fr/; see also EchrNet: The Human Rights Directory)
• European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT)
• European Free Trade Association (EFTA; including EFTA Court)
• Central European Free Trade Association (CEFTA)
• North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
• Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE; see also OSCE Prague Office, High Commissioner for National Minorities (HCNM); Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR))
• Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR; includes the full text of their Human Rights Reports; see also Patterns of Human Rights Violations in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina of the Ombudsmen of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
• Organization of African Unity (OAU)
• Organization of American States (OAS Charter, information about treaties, resolutions, and other OAS Documents; also Andean Community, NAFTA, GATT, and WTO decisions via SICE Dispute Settlement page, and Latin American Intellectual Property Laws and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITS) of the Western Hemisphere)
• Department of International Law (DIL, Organization of American States)
• Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR; see also English page)
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR; also http://www.cidh.oas.org/defaulte.htm)
• NAFTA Secretariat (North American Free Trade Agreement; see also ICSID NAFTA Cases, NAFTA Claims (NAFTA Chapter 11 investor-state dispute settlement), Canada's DFAIT Dispute Settlement page, and USTR's Dispute Settlement page for full texts of arbitration decisions and awards, and OAS texts of NAFTA Binational Panel Reviews and Arbitral Panel Reports)
• World Bank (includes links to Policy Research Working Papers and the Economic Development Institute (EDI) now World Bank Institute (WBI) Working Papers; see also their Law Library)
• G7 Information Centre (now G8; University of Toronto)
• International Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs links via Northwestern University Library)
• Yahoo "International Organizations" links