Research Guide: Foreign and International Law

1. Consult a research guide on the particular international law topic, such as one of the ones suggested at left. Doing a web search with the terms "research guide, "law library," and the particular topic may yield additional useful guides created by academic law librarians.
2. Gather and read additional secondary sources on the topic such as encyclopedia entries (see the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law below), books, journal articles, or other specialized works. On the home page of this guide, see more details about searching the library catalog for books and journal databases for articles.
3. Based on guidance from secondary sources and your understanding of the topic, determine the possibly relevant sources of law and the best ways to locate these. Note that relevant sources of law could be, paraphrasing Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice:

• treaties (aka conventions)
• international custom as evidenced by general practices accepted as law
• nations' generally accepted principles of law, and
• judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified experts on international law.

Contact a Moritz law librarian with questions regarding search strategy or schedule a research consultation for customized assistance.

Westlaw and Lexis include journals and other secondary sources dealing with international law topics. However, researchers of international law topics should look beyond these databases, which often do not contain relevant primary law (like treaty text) or specialized works on international law topics that could be discovered through the OSU Libraries Catalog.

HeinOnline contains a substantial amount of international material in its "Libraries," which include a United Nations Law Collection, a U.S. Treaties and Agreements Library, a World Treaty Library, and numerous international-law related secondary sources.

International court websites typically provide information on the treaty establishing the court, court rules, court opinions and filings, and sometimes video of court proceedings. For examples, see the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

Secondary sources such as books, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries may offer further useful information about issues related to international courts. See this guide's home page for more guidance on searching for secondary sources.