Foreign Law
The Jerome Hall Law Library maintains sizeable collections for several West European jurisdictions, including England and Scotland, Ireland, France, and Germany. These collections include statutes and case law in the vernacular languages, important legal periodicals, as well as selected treatises, monographs, and looseleaf services. Indexes and other reference sources for these jurisdictions, as well as English language materials where available, are also included in this collection.
Similar collections are maintained for Australia, Canada, India (primary sources only), and South Africa. The Library also has a special interest in Nigeria, and has a unique collection of older materials representing many smaller African jurisdictions.
The foreign law collection also includes some primary and secondary source material for Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria. The Library does not actively collect materials for Spanish-speaking jurisdictions.
In recent years the Library has increased its holdings for key Asian jurisdictions, including South Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Japan. These collections include selected primary sources in English, as well as some monographs and looseleafs.
Finally, the Library has selected multi-jurisdictional sources providing access primarily to commercial law and civil procedure, as well as reference materials providing some coverage of many jurisdictions throughout the world.
If you have questions about our foreign law collection or researching in foreign legal systems, contact Cindy Dabney, the Outreach Services Librarian.
Public and Private International Law
In the area of public international law, the Law Library collects duplicate sets of all material generated by the International Law Commission, the International Court of Justice, and its predecessor, the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Library also collects documentation of the Council of Europe, including decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The Library has a sizeable collection of secondary materials, both periodical and monographic, dating back to the nineteenth century, as well as a large reference collection dedicated to public international law.
The Library collects the decisions of the European Court of Justice, as well as monographs and periodicals in the area of European Union law in support of the Indiana University-Bloomington European Union Center of Excellence. This collection also includes documentation of other important international and regional law-making bodies, such as the Council of Europe, and documentation of international bodies dedicated to the codification or unification of private law, such as Unidroit. The Library has extensive monographic, periodical, and looseleaf collections covering all areas of private international law, as well as specialized collections on various international law areas, such as the law of the sea.
The Library has large retrospective microform collections of documentation for several international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the European Union. For recent documentation the Library now relies on the official Web sites of those organizations.
For questions regarding the Law Library's public and private international law collection, contact Cindy Dabney, the Outreach Services Librarian.
