It is recommended that an attorney be consulted when an interpretation of the law is needed. UCF library staff are not able to provide any legal advice. Legal Assistance Information
General Resources -- Foreign & International Courts
Global Legal Information Network* (Library of Congress) (site temporarily unavailable)
The US Library of Congress created GLIN in 1996 and the United States supported it financially until 2012. Pursuant to budgetary constraints in the US, the GLIN operating system environment was shut down in 2012.
The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) Foundation anticipates announcing the initial operating date for the GLIN 2 system sometime before October of 2015.
The former database provided descriptions of national laws, regulations & judicial decisions taken from official legal gazettes of 29 countries.
"a public database of official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other complementary legal sources contributed by governmental agencies and international organizations. These GLIN members contribute the full texts of their published documents to the database in their original languages. Each document is accompanied by a summary in English and, in many cases in additional languages, plus subject terms selected from the multilingual index to GLIN."
"contains summaries and transcripts of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights from 1960 and Butterworths Human Rights Cases from 1996, covering landmark decisions from international, European and English courts and tribunals."
"The decisions reported are from IP Australia and superior courts and tribunals in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the USA and Canada."
"provides the basic, primary documents necessary for research and analysis of international law. Materials are selected by ASIL for their usefulness to scholars, practitioners, business and government officials, both in the United States and abroad. These materials include the full texts of important treaties and agreements, judicial and arbitral decisions, national legislation, international organizations resolutions and other documents."
"contains treaty-related court opinions." See also Tax Treaties
International Laws & Legal Systems
Martindale-Hubbell International Law Digest
Call Number: Reference K 526 .M37
- ask for CD-ROM at Research & Information Desk
- "Digests of the laws of 82 countries.... In the case of Australia and Canada, digests of the laws of the States and Provinces of these countries are included along with the digest of their Federal Laws.... Because of its significance to the laws of a number of European countries, a separate digest is included... setting forth European Union Law."
- "the complete texts of ten International Conventions to which the U.S. is a party."
"gathers, country by country, continent by continent, the Internet-accessible sources of the constitutions, statutes, judicial opinions, and related legal material from around the globe"
"Free, independent and non-profit access to worldwide law"
Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social, & Cultural Encyclopedia
Call Number: Reference K 48 .L44 2002
- "400 A–Z entries on places from Scotland to Suriname, concepts and terms like legal realism and retribution, and key documents such as the Writ of Certiorari
- Nearly 275 diagrams illustrating the legal structure of various states and countries - A glossary of hundreds of key terms like 'adversarialism' and 'sharia'."
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History
"designed to be used by students, teachers, practitioners and researchers as a self-guided tour of relevant, quality, up-to-date online resources covering important areas of international law"
"Now in its second edition, this textbook presents a critical rethinking of the study of comparative law and legal theory in a globalising world, and proposes an alternative model. It highlights the inadequacies of current Western theoretical approaches in comparative law, international law, legal theory and jurisprudence, especially for studying Asian and African laws, arguing that they are too parochial and eurocentric to meet global challenges. Menski argues for combining modern natural law theories with positivist and socio-legal traditions, building an interactive, triangular concept of legal pluralism. Advocated as the fourth major approach to legal theory, this model is applied in analysing the historical and conceptual development of Hindu law, Muslim law, African laws and Chinese law."