International & Foreign Law Research Guide: International Law Basics

From the Northwestern University law library, this guide provides guidance on public international law and private international law research.

From the Library of Congress, this guide provides an in depth overview of the framework and resources used in international law.

From the Emory University law library, this guide covers resources for a range of private international law topics including trade law, intellectual property, family law, tax law, human rights, arbitration, and international courts.

From the Columbia University law library, this guide provides an in depth overview of the framework and resources used with United Nations research.

This guide was first published in the Winter 2005 issue of the Law Library Journal [97 L. Libr. J. 49 (Winter 2005)] and has been regularly updated, including a new title in 2021: Understanding European Union Legal Materials.

From the Columbia University law library, this guide provides an in depth overview of the framework and resources used with international trade research.

From GlobaLex, this guide provides an in depth overview of the framework and resources used with international human rights research.

Through its events, publications, information resources, research initiatives, and educational programs, ASIL advances international law scholarship and education for international law professionals as well as for broader policymaking audiences and the public.

EUR-Lex provides free access, in the 24 official EU languages, to:
the authentic Official Journal of the European Union, EU law (EU treaties, directives, regulations, decisions, consolidated legislation, etc.), preparatory acts (legislative proposals, reports, green and white papers, etc.), EU case-law (judgments, orders, etc.), international agreements, EFTA documents, summaries of EU legislation, which put legal acts into a policy context, and other public documents.

As the official website of the European Union, Europa provides legal documents as well as statistics, data, reports, and other official publications.

The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. The series, which is produced by the Department of State's Office of the Historian, began in 1861 and now comprises more than 450 individual volumes. The volumes published over the last two decades increasingly contain declassified records from all the foreign affairs agencies.

The Law Library of Congress produces reports on foreign, comparative, and international law in response to requests from Members of Congress, Congressional staff and committees, the federal courts, executive branch agencies, and others. There are over 1,000 legal reports available online. Browse reports by topic, region, year of publication, or simply browse all the reports.

Catalogue of United Nations(UN) documents and publications indexed by the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library and the Library of the UN Office at Geneva. The Digital Library provides access to UN-produced content including UN documents and publications and information about UN materials in our collections.

The Official Document System (ODS) is an online database of UN documents that was first launched in 1993. ODS includes documents of the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and their subsidiaries, as well as administrative issuances and other documents. Additionally, the database contains scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993, including all resolutions of the principal organs, all documents of the Security Council and the General Assembly Official Records. Documents are available in the official languages of the UN; some documents are also available in German. ODS does not have the following types of materials: documents issued before 1993 that have not yet been digitized, press releases, sales publications, such as the Yearbook and the Treaty Series, and documents that do not have a UN symbol.

WorldTradeLaw.net offers a free library of current trade news and resources, as well as a subscription service (the DSC Service), which provides summary and analysis of all WTO reports and arbitrations; a current keyword index; a database of dispute settlement tables and statistics; and a user-friendly search tool for WTO cases, legal texts, and other documents.