Some resources in this guide are Mitchell Hamline School of Law licensed databases. These are available to students, faculty, and staff either with a network login or individual password. Many of them are also available to the public from the computers in the library, as well as through computers signed into the school's wireless network.
Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, and Lexis are subscription services that require users to have individual accounts for access.
If you need more information on this topic, please contact the reference desk:
by phone: 651-290-6424
via e-mail: reference@mitchellhamline.edu
Or, during regular work hours, you may chat with a Mitchell Hamline research librarian here.
Primary law for foreign countries may be difficult to come by, particularly if you want it in English. This page gives you some starting points for primary law research in different countries. Be aware that not all of these resources will be in English.
As a starting point, you should probably know whether the country you're researching is a civil law country, a common law country, or something else. In general, civil law countries place less importance on judicial opinions, and therefore judicial opinions for those countries may be more difficult for you to find.
The University of Ottawa has a great map telling you the legal system of particular countries:
After that, you may want to go next to one of the portals below, to see a wide variety of information from various countries and regions.
Go directly to the source of the laws - the governments of the countries themselves! Of course, do not expect that nations that do not have English as an official language to have English translations for their websites. Instead, be pleasantly surprised if that is the case.
Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World by Gazettes, like the United States' Federal Register, are typically the first place to be informed of a country's laws and regulations. Note that not all countries publish gazettes.
Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World by While Westlaw and Lexis do not have the comprehensive coverage for other countries that they do for the United States, they do have some foreign law databases.