What is the difference between foreign, comparative, and international law?
What are the primary sources in foreign law?
What are the primary sources of international law?
How do I find FCIL materials on Westlaw/Lexis?
Does the library have any specialty databases that could help with an FCIL topic?
Foreign law is the domestic law of a state. “Generally, the law of another country.” Foreign Law, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019)
Comparative legal research refers to comparing laws on a single topic in a number of different jurisdictions. Comparative law is about the methodology of making comparisons.
Public international law, at its most basic, governs the relationships between states, international organizations, and states and international organizations.
Private international law governs the choice of law to apply when there are conflicts in the domestic law of different countries related to private transactions.
The primary legal sources of a country can vary based on the system, but generally we find similar materials as you're used to in the U.S. - most states have a constitution, legislation, cases, and regulations. What's different is usually how those sources function, how are they are published, and sometimes what they're called. For some typical examples: regulations are typically referred to as subsidiary or secondary legislation; some states codified their legislation and regulations and some only print them in chronological order without consolidating amendments.
As a more complicated example, take cases - while the U.S. and other common law countries always consider cases primary sources, in many civil law systems cases may almost never be considered binding and are rarely referred to as primary (sometimes they are even referred to as secondary). This is because, in those systems, cases are binding only to the parties and do not establish laws.
From a research perspective, I recommend you treat cases like primary sources - while they may not establish law, the strategies for finding cases and what you get from cases (examples of legal analysis) are more similar to constitutions, legislation, and regulations. The strategies for finding secondary sources and the type of information you get from secondary sources like books and journals (explanations and citations to primary sources) is not found in cases. If you're going to analyze a case in any jurisdiction, you always want to consider whether that case is binding. (This is the same task you do in the U.S. - you wouldn't be likely to analyze a New York state issue using a California case because it would not be binding.)
For more on researching foreign law, see our In-Depth FAQs. For more on the difference between the common law and the civil law, see Why is it so hard to find cases for some countries?
Sources of international law, specifically public international law, are NOT similar to domestic legal sources. For example in the U.S., law is created primarily by a codified body of statutes and precedent from case law. In public international law, we generally use as sources of law:
treaties, customary international law, and general principles of law; jurisprudence from national/international courts and scholarly writings serve as a subsidiary means of evidence and interpretation for international law.
This list of international law sources is pulled from Article 38 of the International Court of Justice statute, but even the significance and extent of these sources of law (and whether they're in hierarchical order!) are not agreed on by all scholars and practitioners. Basically what this means is that international law is a lot less concrete and more based on custom than U.S. law; do not be alarmed if you cannot find authoritative language or precedent when researching your international law questions. Also be aware that there is often little enforcement of international law.
For more on researching international law, see our In-Depth FAQs.
Many sources will NOT be translated into English, unless English is an official language of the country you are researching. For international organizations, most make an effort to have documents available in the official languages of each member state, but that is not always feasible. As a general matter, primary sources are more likely than secondary sources to be translated. When you do find translations, they may be described as authoritative, authentic, official, or unofficial - authoritative would be considered the most desirable and unofficial the least desirable. Machine translations (like Google translate) are generally unreliable though they can help you identify the subject matter.
For a much more in-depth look at translations and research steps, see chapter 2 on translations in Marci Hoffman & Mary Rumsey, International and Foreign Legal Research: A Coursebook (2d ed. 2012), available in the library here.
For legislation, Google the name of the law in English; the most likely results will be from government websites in English or unofficial translations from law firms (most likely with legislation related to commerce) or from a variety of non-profits (most likely with social justice topics). There are some free websites from international organizations by topic that provide legislation; they often have English summaries if not the whole document. Some of the most popular are:
Tips for finding translations of cases:
Other databases that might provide translations:
The availability of foreign and international materials on Westlaw and Lexis varies widely, depending on which database and which country you are looking for. Some countries listed may have only news sources (for example, Mongolia on Lexis+), and others may have cases, secondary sources, statutes, and news (for example, the United Kingdom on Lexis+). It appears that English-speaking states have more materials.
It is important that you always check for coverage using the scope icon (the little i with the circle around it). Although we may be used to losing coverage of U.S. secondary sources on Westlaw and Lexis as publishers change or build their own databases, rarely do we encounter a loss of primary sources. This is not the case here: because of contracts with publishers and different ways of publishing legal information, it is very possible for sources to be removed. The further you browse down into a collection, the more specific the scope note will be. For example, on Westlaw Edge, if I select International Materials-United Kingdom-Cases-All UK Cases, then I can see a list of all included reporters, and the scope note is a summary indicator that some cases from 1220 are available and some reporters have PDFs. If I select a specific reporter from that list, I can then use the scope note to find the years of coverage and the content.
To access these materials on Lexis+, look in the Explore box for International:
On the Westlaw homepage, go to Content Types, then scroll down to Specialty areas and select International Materials:
Another option on Westlaw is Practical Law, which contains some multijurisdictional chart builders for some countries on some topics (mostly commercial areas of law). From your Westlaw, select the dropdown arrow by the logo, then select Practical Law, then above the search bar select Global Home.
Note that although these are termed “international,” these materials are usually foreign - the domestic law of a country - with the exception of European Union materials.
For the UK: You can access Westlaw UK by going to uk.westlaw.com and logging in with your usual Westlaw login. It is similar to what you're used to seeing for the U.S. on your usual Westlaw account. These is more extensive that what you will find on your usual Westlaw account for the UK.
Browse our databases list by subject, which lists all of our subscription databases and the best free sources we recommend on certain topics. Our databases listed under Foreign: General cover more than one country; our databases listed under Foreign: By Jurisdiction focus on one country. See also the subjects Human Rights, International, and United Nations.
Generally, country reports collect information on a particular country, and they tend to focus on a particular theme, like human rights or economic indicators. In most legal scenarios, "country report" is a term of art that is a great search term, and they tend to be freely available; for example, you could Google <<algeria "country report">> and you would likely find relevant results. Usually, it is harder to evaluate reports than to find them so pay careful attention to the authoring body and any point of view they may have.
Country reports are a very important resource in immigration and asylum/refugee work; two of the best starting points on this topic are: