Foreign, Comparative & International Law

Foreign Law

Background, Foreign Government Descriptions, and Relationships with the U.S. | Browsing Foreign Law Titles in the Online Catalog | Subject Searches of Foreign Law in the Online Catalog | Why You Need to Use Interlibrary Loan | General Guides to Researching Foreign Law | Guides and Sources for Specific Nations | Subscription Databases | Important Book Sources | Google Customized FCIL Search

Background, Foreign Government Descriptions, and Relationships with the U.S.

• CIA World Fact Book (one page country summaries and comparison tools)
• State Department U.S. Bilateral Relation Fact Sheets (descriptions and helpful links)
• Department of State Under Secretary for Political Affairs (top tab: Countries and Other Areas)

• Library of Congress Country Studies 
• JuriGlobe-World Legal Systems - breakdown of types of legal systems by region and country.

Browsing Foreign Law Titles in the Online Catalog

Researching foreign law can be tricky.

• Using Library of Congress (LoC) Classes can help. 
• Try using location call numbers, rather than subject classifications to search.
• Books have a single location class, but fall into many subject classes.   
• Here is a tool to locate foreign law items by their LoC "K" subclasses.

Additional Search Tips:

• We have a small foreign law collection.  So, search all of MERLIN (all University of Missouri Campuses).
• Many nations and regions may have few or even no titles.
• The Library of Congress groups nations into regions.  Groupings may change after political reorganizations.
• What to do if you see? "No matches found; nearby LC Call Numbers are: [followed by a list of call numbers]." 
• Keep Scrolling.
  • For example, the range for Japan is KNX1-KNX4999, and the search tool below will search KNX1, resulting in "No matches found." However, if you scroll down the entries to "Your entry KNX1 would be here," you will see that the first entry for Japan among the MERLIN libraries begins with "KNX42."

• Still not finding much? Expand your search to MOBIUS (70 university libraries).
•  Run a browse search in WorldCat's free catalog (with over 10,000 libraries).  

Subject Searches of Foreign Law in the Online Catalog

Also search by using traditional subject headings.  Like  "Law -- Germany."

And the results . . . .

Note:  many foreign legal subjects are classified in hard to predict ways, such as "Domestic Relations - Germany," which doesn't appear in the list above, but which is a real subject class.  However, if we are good at guessing and try "Domestic Relations-Germany" at UMKC-Law library, we find:

Why You Need to Use Interlibrary Loan

 Within MOBIUS, Washington University has far more foreign law than UMKC.  Consequently, you will need ILL for your research.  

General Guides to Researching Foreign Law

From Globalex

• Basic Guide to Researching Foreign Law - UPDATE
• Foreign Law: Subject Law Collections on the Web - UPDATE
• Finding the Law: the Micro-States and Small Jurisdictions of Europe
• ☞ List of Countries
  

Guides and Sources for Specific Nations

Subscription Databases

Important Book Sources

Google Customized FCIL Search