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International Relations *: International Law

A guide to databases and scholarly web sites in support of research in international relations and comparative politics.

Research Guides by Topic

United Nations

United Nations

Databases/Documents Collections

Human Rights Information by Country

Legal Structure

Charter-based bodies

Treaty-based bodies

There are eight human rights treaty bodies that monitor the implementation of the core international human rights treaties:

United Nations Human Rights Treaty System

Other important United Nations agencies concerned with international law and human rights:

Economic and Social Council

The following bodies report directly to Economic and Social Council:

Commissions

Regional Commissions

United Nations Security Council

The following bodies report directly to the Security Council:

United Nations Research Guide

Human Rights Organizations/Advocacy Groups

Listed below are selected organizations and other groups that research, provide information about, or advocate for human rights. Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

  • Asylumlaw.org -- founded to help lawyers and other accredited representatives worldwide prepare the asylum cases for people around the globe seeking safety from persecution by applying for asylum in a foreign country. Site include over 4,000 documents used to support asylum claims under a variety of conditions.
  • European Inter–University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) -- an interdisciplinary center formed by 41 universities from all European Union member states committed to the promotion of high-level inter-disciplinary human rights education, research, training, and culture, and a shared global understanding of human rights and democracy.
  • Great News Network -- a news site that reports only positive news stories from around the world with the intention of inspiring and motivating people to do their part to make a better world.
  • International Justice Resource Center -- provides advocates, civil society organizations, and victims of human rights abuses with the information and resources they need to effectively use international legal protections.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Legal Databases

Legal Research Databases

  • Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals [from law library e-resources list] -- provides full-text access to important decisions in various international tribunals and commentary about those decisions from international criminal law experts.
  • Brill Online Reference Works -- a database indexing the scholarly book content of Brill/Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, a leading publisher of imprints in international law and human rights law. Use the database to locate titles that can then be searched in the USC Libraries Catalog or, if not found there, the Law Library Catalog.
  • British and Irish Legal Information Institute -- a full-text database of British and Irish case law and legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish material.
  • Electronic Information System for International Law -- a database for searching primary materials, authoritative web sites, and helpful research guides to international law on the Internet. Comprehensive and updated frequently.
  • Foreign Law Guide -- contains both primary and secondary source legal information for more than 170 jurisdictions from major nations to crown colonies, semi-independent states, and supra-national regional organizations.
  • Global-Regulation -- a comprehensive, user-friendly search engine of machine-produced English translations of regulatory laws from approximately 128 data sources representing jurisdictions throughout the world, including the European Union.
  • HeinOnline Foreign and International Law Resources Database -- includes the publications of the American Society of International Law along with prominent Yearbooks from around the world, including the Hague Permanent Court of International Justice series. It also includes U.S. Law Digests, International Tribunals/Judicial Decisions and more. Access by clicking on link in left-hand column.
  • HeinOnline Law Journal Library -- full text access to digitized content of major legal periodicals, the Federal Register, and other law-related materials.
  • Human Rights Studies Online -- a research database that provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The growing collection takes a case study approach in providing access to primary and secondary evidence across multiple media formats (more than 75,000 pages of text and 150 hours of video) that give voice to the countless victims of human rights crimes, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty other major subject areas.
  • Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals -- a multilingual index to articles and book reviews published worldwide.. The database covers international (public and private), comparative, and municipal law of countries other than the United States, the U.K., Canada, and Australia.
  • LEXIS/NEXIS Academic -- a database that includes full text access to law review journals, federal and state case law, European Union Cases, and the complete contents of the International Legal Materials publication from the American Society of International Law.
  • Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law -- this online version is a peer reviewed, regularly updated, and comprehensive work covering the central and essential topics in international law. Particular attention has been paid to the contextualization of each topic within international law as well as the presentation of current trends while maintaining a focus on the mainstream/majority view.
  • Migration Law Database -- the database draws together migration related instruments and relevant norms regulating migration at the international and regional levels. Sources include relevant international, regional and bilateral treaties; international and regional resolutions, declarations and other instruments. The database will soon also contain relevant and prominent case law.
  • Philosopher's Index -- indexes articles from over 550 English and foreign language philosophy journals covering topics such as ethics, social and political philosophy, and the philosophy of law, religion, science, history, education, and language.
  • World Legal Information Institute [WorldLII] Database --  an open access database of Internet-accessible legislation, constitutions, statutes, case law, superior or high court decisions, journals, treaties, law reform, domain name decisions, secondary materials, and related legal material from around the globe.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Related Social Sciences Databases

Social Sciences Databases

Listed below are databases that provide access to legal research applied to specific fields of study in the social sciences.

News Sources

Multidisciplinary

  • FDSys [U.S. government documents]
  • JSTOR [multidisciplinary journal article archive]
  • ProQuest [multidisciplinary newspapers, magazines, and journals]

Human Rights Law Resource Gudies

Below is a select list of web sites with links to additional resources on human rights law.

Document Collections

Human Rights Research Guide

Listed below are organizations and other groups that research, provide information about, or advocate for human rights.

  • Asylumlaw.org -- founded to help lawyers and other accredited representatives worldwide prepare the asylum cases for people around the globe seeking safety from persecution by applying for asylum in a foreign country. Site include over 4,000 documents used to support asylum claims under a variety of conditions.
  • European Inter–University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) -- an interdisciplinary center formed by 41 universities from all European Union member states committed to the promotion of high-level inter-disciplinary human rights education, research, training, and culture, and a shared global understanding of human rights and democracy.
  • Great News Network -- a news site that reports only positive news stories from around the world with the intention of inspiring and motivating people to do their part to make a better world.
  • International Justice Resource Center -- a nonprofit human rights organization that aims to educate and empower individuals to better understand their human rights as global citizens.  IJRC has extensive overviews of human rights laws, its directories of the international courts and bodies that monitor them, and its accompanying research aids. Within these aids, there are Thematic Research Guides—comprehensive primers outlining specific human rights (e.g., citizenship, education, asylum, immigration) and their associated oversight mechanisms and latest developments. The website also provides resources for staying up to date on recent global developments through “News and Events” and its “Media and Publications” section, where visitors can download various manuals and even view videos of some of their prior training sessions.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

International Environmental Law

Below is a select list of web sites with links to additional resources on internatiional environmental law.

International Environmental Law Research Guide

International Courts and Tribunals

Listed below are standing institutions intended to settle disputes between sovereign States through binding decisions based on international law:

Criminal Bodies

Organizations

Regional Bodies

Africa

Middle East

Americas

Arbitration

Europe