Foreign Law Guide
International & Comparative Legal Research
Finding the law of another country almost always comes down to two questions: where does that country publish its official gazette, and which version of the text in front of you actually carried legal force on the date that matters.
A textbook will tell you what a code says today. It will rarely tell you whether the printed page or the electronic copy controls where the two differ, or whether the page on a ministry website was updated since the date you actually need. That gap between knowing the rule and knowing which copy of it to trust is what this guide is organized around.
The answer is never the same twice. Italy's Gazzetta Ufficiale states plainly that the printed edition prevails where its own electronic copy differs from it. France's Journal officiel dropped paper entirely and has been exclusively electronic since 1 January 2016. Two adjoining civil law systems, and two opposite rules for the same question. Neither is guessable without checking the country itself.
What follows is organized around how a research question actually starts: with a country already in mind, or with a question that runs across every country at once.
Start with a country
There are 20 country records built and reviewed so far, each covering the legal family, the official gazette, the constitution in force, and the language the law is actually written in. Every one was built the same way, primary source first and narrative second. A fact that no source could settle is stated as unsettled rather than guessed at.
- Countries by nameEvery jurisdiction covered so far, arranged for browsing rather than searching.
- Country index, A to ZThe full alphabetical list, for when you already know the name you are looking for.
Research guides
6 guides for questions that begin in one legal system or one area of law rather than with a foreign country. Each cites its sources beside the sentences they support and says what those sources leave open. They sit alongside the country records, not above them: Texas is not filed under the United States, and the subject guides link whichever jurisdictions the research needs.
Jurisdictions
Where one legal system publishes its statutes, regulations and court records.
- Researching United States LawFederal and state law are published in different places. Settle which system governs, then which kind of text you need: statute, regulation, decision or case record.
- Researching Texas LawA Texas question needs Texas sources. Find the statute in the Legislature's codes, the court in the judiciary's own structure, and the research guides that connect them.
Subjects
Questions that cut across systems, with the vocabulary to research them.
- Civil Law: The Tradition and the SubjectBefore searching, decide which meaning you have. One points to a family of legal systems; the other to the law of contracts, property, family and civil wrongs anywhere.
- Researching Tort LawAn injury is a fact. A tort is a legal conclusion about it, reached under a particular system's rules. Research the rules before drawing the conclusion.
- Researching a Personal Injury QuestionA general guide cannot assess a case. It can show which questions an injury raises, which sources answer each one, and where general explanations stop being reliable.
- Comparing Tort Law Across Legal SystemsThe same word can name different rules, and different words can name similar ones. Compare questions and sources rather than labels, and say plainly what each side leaves open.
Start with a question
Some research questions cut across every country at once: what a constitution says rather than a statute, how one legal system compares with another, or what an abbreviation buried in a footnote actually stands for. These four hubs gather the tools for exactly that kind of question, and every entry on them says what the tool actually covers rather than only naming it.
- Constitutions in forceWhere to find the current text of a national constitution and confirm that it is current.
- Comparative lawTools and collections for setting one jurisdiction's rules beside another's.
- Abbreviations and dictionariesDecoding the abbreviated citations that fill the footnotes of foreign legal writing.
- Periodical indexesIndexes and research guides for the journal literature on foreign and comparative law.
Longer pieces built from the country records are collected under Articles.
About this guide
Foreign Law Guide is an independent publication. It costs nothing to read, asks for no account, and exists as a separate work from any other guide that happens to share its name in print or online: no relationship connects the two beyond the coincidence of what they are called. Nothing here was carried over from an earlier version of anything.
Research entries name their sources and state what those sources support. Country guides start with official gazettes, courts and legislation. Introductory research guides also use clearly identified university explanations, while distinguishing those overviews from the law itself. The date under each entry marks when that check was last made, so a reader can judge how current a page is rather than take it on faith. A record with no date attached to it is a record nobody has checked recently.