LibGuides: Foreign Law Research: Finding Legislation

Foreign Law Guide

Foreign Law Guide This link opens in a new window The Foreign Law Guide offers relevant information on sources of foreign law.
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The Foreign Law Guide is one of the most useful resources for locating foreign legislation. For each country, a list of subjects will often include references and links to legislation, useful government sites, and translations. This is a subscription resource accessible with your USC ID.

Global-Regulation

Global-Regulation This link opens in a new window
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Access to translated legislation from over 90 countries.

World Legal Information Institue (WorldLII)

World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) This link opens in a new window WordlLII provides a free searchable database of other Legal Information Institutes alongside its own searchable collection.

This free website provides an extensive array of sources and links to legislation worldwide. Click on "All Countries" on the left, select a country, and then select "Legislation" for a list of sources (including databases on WorldLII and links to other sources).

Lexis and Westlaw

Lexis (Lexis+) This link opens in a new window LexisNexis provides a wide range of legal and news sources on its Lexis+ research platform. Lexis access is restricted to students, staff, and faculty of the Gould School of Law. Email reference@law.usc.edu for the authorization code to set up an individual user account.
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Westlaw (Thomson Reuters) This link opens in a new window Westlaw provides a wide range of legal primary and secondary sources on its research platform. Westlaw access is restricted to students, staff, and faculty of the Gould School of Law. Email reference@law.usc.edu for the authorization code to set up an individual user account.
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Both Lexis (USC Gould only) and Westlaw (USC Gould only) provide access to legislation for a limited number of jurisdictions.

Lexis.com has legislation from the following countries: Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, and the U.K. Please note that Lexis's foreign law content has not yet migrated to Lexis Advance but is likely to do so in the near future.

WestlawNext is more limited and currently has legislation from the European Union, Hong Kong, Korea, Scotland and the U.K. Be sure to check Lexis and Westlaw for the most up-to-date coverage information.

Topical or Jurisdictional Collections

Comparative Environmental Law and Regulation (Westlaw) This link opens in a new window Written by international contributors and edited by noted experts, Comparative Environmental Law and Regulation analyzes key environmental laws, regulations, and implementation systems of more than 60 countries.
Copyright Throughout the World (Westlaw) This link opens in a new window Copyright throughout the World is a guide to the copyright law of a variety of nations and is useful for copyright practitioners working with the Internet and other media and academics researching comparative laws. It summarizes the important features of copyright law, related rights, and moral rights from countries throughout the world.
Doing Business (World Bank) This link opens in a new window The Doing Business law library is the largest free online collection of business laws and regulations. The Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.
FAOLEX This link opens in a new window FAOLEX provides a comprehensive collection of national laws, regulations and policies on food, agriculture and natural resources management.
Legislation Online This link opens in a new window This database provides direct access to international norms and standards relating to specific human dimension issues. It also provides domestic legislation and other documents of relevance to these issues.
NATLEX This link opens in a new window Contains over 88,000 records covering 196 countries and over 160 territories and subdivisions. The documents provide full texts or abstracts of legislation.

UN Women’s Family Law Database This link opens in a new window The Global Women’s Leadership Project (GWLP), developed under the auspices of Under Secretary General and Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, has created a clearing house of information on laws that govern women’s status in the family, as the first phase of the UN Women’s Family Law database. This is the first mapping of its kind that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional family law to examine the entire legal system of a country to identify the law’s subtle and powerful impact on a woman’s status in her family. Provisions that govern and control a woman’s relationship to her family inform her political, economic and social status. These unequal provisions are found in the laws governing property, inheritance, custody, guardianship, marriage, divorce, residence, citizenship, domicile, age of marriage, guardianship, female genital mutilation (FGM), “husband obedience “ and sex-selective laws, among others. In many countries around the world, family law is a locus of gender discrimination and magnifies the unequal status of women in the public sphere and limit their opportunity to participate in public life, whether political, economic or social.
WIPOLex This link opens in a new window WIPO Lex is a global database that provides free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property (IP) such as treaties administered by WIPO, other IP-related treaties, and laws and regulations of the Members States of WIPO, the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.

See also World Patent Law and Practice (Law Library Third Floor, K1505.4 .B35)