Research Guides: Advanced Legal Research Foreign, International & Comparative Law Guide: Foreign Law

World Legal Systems

Legal systems differ from country to country and many operate very differently from the United States' legal system. Categories of legal systems include:

Common Law (Example: United States)
Civil Law (Example: Germany)
Religious Law (Example: Saudi Arabia)
Customary Law (Example: Andorra)

A country may operate hybrid systems as well (Example: China).

JuriGlobe: World Legal Systems Includes classifications of countries according to legal systems and international linguistic areas. Also provides general bibliography on comparative and foreign law.
International Legal Systems - An Introduction (PDF) This publication is by the United States Department of Justice. National Security Division. Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism. It provides an overview of several types of legal systems.

Constitutions

World Constitutions Illustrated on HeinOnline The HeinOnline World Constitutions Illustrated has as its goal to contain the current constitution of every country in the world in its original language. For countries where multiple original-language versions exist, they’ll provide each one. Also included is at least one English translation. They also link you to scholarly articles and commentary, and provide a bibliography of select constitutional books available elsewhere.
University of Bern’s International Constitutional Law Project The International Constitutional Law Project provides English translations of and other textual material related to constitutional documents. It cross-references those documents for quick comparison of constitutional provisions.
Constitute Project Constitute includes the currently-in-force constitution for nearly every independent state in the world, as well as some draft and historical texts. Constitute was developed by the authors of the Comparative Constitutions Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

Foreign Law Resources

Foreign law is the domestic law of non-U.S. countries. Below are some selected resources for finding foreign law.

Foreign Law Guide (Marcie Hoffman, Gen. Ed.) The Foreign Law Guide cites to major codes and collections of case law from over 190 jurisdictions.
WorldLII (World Legal Information Institute) Contains over 1,500 databases of case-law, legislation, treaties, law reform reports, law journals, and other materials from over 100 jurisdictions.
Globalex GlobaLex is published by the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law. They publish well-regarded international, foreign, and comparative law research guides and articles. The guides and articles published are written by scholars well known in their respective fields.
Cornell’s Legal Information Institute: WorldLaw The LII collection of world legal materials gathers, country by country, continent by continent, the Internet-accessible sources of the constitutions, statutes, judicial opinions, and related legal material from around the globe (excluding the U.S. material held in the LII's other collections). It also holds resources and document collections of International law.
Library of Congress Guide to Law Online: Nations This list provides links to many of the different law resources available online from every country in the world.
Government Gazettes Online (University of Michigan) Through an A-Z list of governments of the world, researchers can locate the laws released in the official gazettes of nations of the world by title or those published online through direct links to official gazette websites.
Foreign Law by Jurisdiction (NYU Law) This research guide lists essential print and online sources for researching foreign law. Note that some of the material linked to in the Guide is subscription based so access to those materials may be limited.
Foreign Law Resources--In Depth (University of Iowa Law Library) This guide provides both electronic and print resources for sovereign jurisdictions and dependencies of countries other than the United States. Note that some of the material linked to in the Guide is subscription based so access to those materials may be limited.