LibGuides: Foreign and Comparative Law Research: General Materials on Foreign and Comparative Law

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Basic Definitions of Foreign and Comparative Law

For legal researchers based in the United States of America, foreign law refers to the domestic law of other nations. Comparative law is the study of the differences between the laws of two or more countries, or between two or more legal systems.

The legal systems of most countries fit into the following categories of legal traditions, with many nations combining elements from multiple traditions to form their own unique systems:

Legal System	Brief Description & Country Examples
Civil Law	Based on Roman law, the civil law system is comprised of comprehensive codes governing specific areas of law (criminal, civil, commercial, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc.). Commentaries written by legal scholars interpret, criticize, and develop the law, and these commentaries carry great influence as compared to the lesser weight given to judicial opinions. The civil law system is perhaps the largest legal tradition and characterizes the systems of most of the countries in continental Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa.
Common Law	Legal doctrine in the common law system is developed over time through judicial opinions, rather than from broad comprehensive codes. Judicial decisions are traditionally the most important source of new legal rules in the common law system. The common law system originated in England, and it can be found today in other nations with a connection to the British Commonwealth. These nations include the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India.
Customary Law	Customary law is rarely a standalone legal system and is instead typically melded together with elements from other legal traditions. Custom is often rooted in a nation's daily experiences and spiritual/philosophical traditions. Andorra and the Channel islands of Guernsey (UK) and Jersey (UK) are the only three areas that have what legal scholars today would consider "customary law monosystems," meaning legal systems that are truly derived from customary law and not mixed with other legal traditions.
Religious Law	Religious legal systems are based largely on traditional religious texts. Similar to customary law systems, many nations today have mixed systems with elements of the religious legal system mixed with another legal system, typically civil law. The religious legal system is most frequently found in areas that practice Islamic or Talmudic law. An example of a religious law monosystem is Saudi Arabia.

Note: Many modern jurisdictions have what are referred to as "mixed" legal systems. These legal systems combine elements from two or more legal systems to reflect the unique needs of that jurisdiction. For example, the Canadian province of Quebec has a mixed legal system that combines elements of both the common and civil law traditions. (For more information on Quebec's particular use of a mixed legal system, see this piece on the Canadian Department of Justice's website.)

If you are interested in learning more about the individual legal systems and the nations which practice those systems, the University of Ottawa's online database JuriGlobe: World Legal Systems is an excellent resource that provides maps, descriptions of the major systems, and lists of the countries practicing each legal system.

Distinguishing International Law

Before getting started with research in the area of foreign and comparative law, make sure that what you are seeking is not actually an international law topic.

Public international law can be generally defined as "the law of nations." It encapsulates a variety of different legal subjects, including diplomatic relations, treaties, international organizations, and customary international law. It largely governs and structures the interactions between nation states and international organizations.

The UNC Law Library has a separate research guide that explores public international law research. Please check out this guide for an overview of treaties research, international organizations, and international courts/tribunals.

Private international law describes the body of law which governs when there is a conflict between the citizens of different countries. This body of law is also frequently referred to as "conflict of laws." While you will ultimately end your research process in the domestic law of a specific jurisdiction, you should begin by having a thorough understanding of the proper conflict of laws analysis to use.

The following research guides provide a basic overview of conducting legal research in the area of private international law:

Private International Law by UCLA School of Law's Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library
Private International Law by the Peace Palace Library
International Law - Specialized Sources - Private International Law by NYU Law Library

Foreign & Comparative Law Journals

Journal articles provide both background on the major legal systems and allow researchers to trace developments in various fields within foreign and comparative law. Use these resources to gain a deeper understanding of topics of interest and to begin identifying relevant primary law materials that will be important for your research.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

Available through HeinOnline, the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals indexes articles and foreign periodicals by subject, country, and region. The IFLP database coverage includes records from 1984 - present, and records from 1960-1983 can be viewed in the print edition (also available via HeinOnline). The IFLP is a starting place for identifying scholarly articles related to your research areas of interest.

Foreign & Comparative Law Journals

HeinOnline arranges scholarly journals by subject area, and you can view the collections of journals dedicated to foreign and comparative law topics at the following links:

Comparative Law
Foreign Law

(Note: HeinOnline use is limited to UNC Faculty & Students.)

Citations to Foreign Legal Materials

If you encounter an unfamiliar or incomplete citation during your research process, there are several resources that you can use to identify the complete name of the resource.

Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations

Cardiff University's Index to Legal Abbreviations allows you to search for the meaning of abbreviations for a wide selection of foreign language law publications from over 295 jurisdictions. The database allows you to search an abbreviation to identify the full name of the publication, but it also allows keyword searching in an effort to identify the correct title for a publication as well.

Table 2 in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation

Table 2 in The Bluebook contains citation instructions for a variety of foreign jurisdictions. In addition to providing assistance in formatting citations, this section of the Bluebook is also an excellent tool for identifying the different types of primary legal material used in a foreign jurisdiction, along with the official names for the resource and its years of publication.

Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citations

The Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citations is available in print behind the Reference Desk. Created by the Journal of International Law and Politics at NYU, it covers citation systems for 45 countries, in additional to citation rules for international organizations, tribunals, and treaties.

Additional Readings on the Major Legal Systems

In addition to the brief summaries available on JuriGlobe: World Legal Systems, we also recommend reviewing A Primer on the Civil-Law System by James G. Apple & Robert P. Deyling, which is downloadable as a PDF from the Federal Judicial Center.

The following resources are available via the UNC Law Library and provide additional information on the major legal systems:

Legal Traditions of the World by H. Patrick Glenn
ISBN: 9780199580804
Publication Date: 2010
This prize-winning work offers a major new means of conceptualizing law and legal relations across the world. National laws are placed in the broader context of major legal traditions, those of chthonic (or indigenous) law, talmudic law, civil law, islamic law, common law, hindu law andconfucian law. Each tradition is examined in terms of its institutions and substantive law, its founding concepts and methods, its attitude towards the concept of change and its teaching on relations with other traditions and peoples. Legal traditions are explained in terms of multivalent andnon-conflictual forms of logic and thought. This book will be invaluable to law students and lawyers engaged in comparative or transnational work, historians, social scientists, and all those interested in the legal traditions that underpin the world's major societies.
Mixed Legal Systems, East and West by Mohamed Y. Mattar; Vernon Valentine Palmer; Anna Koppel
ISBN: 9781472431066
Publication Date: 2015
Advancing legal scholarship in the area of mixed legal systems, as well as comparative law more generally, this book expands the comparative study of the world's legal families to those of jurisdictions containing not only mixtures of common and civil law, but also to those mixing Islamic and/or traditional legal systems with those derived from common and/or civil law traditions. With contributions from leading experts in their fields, the book takes us far beyond the usual focus of comparative law with analysis of a broad range of countries, including relatively neglected and under-researched areas. The discussion is situated within the broader context of the ongoing development and evolution of mixed legal systems against the continuing tides of globalization on the one hand, and on the other hand the emergence of Islamic governments in some parts of the Middle East, the calls for a legal status for Islamic law in some European countries, and the increasing focus on traditional and customary norms of governance in post-colonial contexts. This book will be an invaluable source for students and researchers working in the areas of comparative law, legal pluralism, the evolution of mixed legal systems, and the impact of colonialism on contemporary legal systems. It will also be an important resource for policy-makers and analysts.
The Civil Law Tradition by Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo; John Henry Merryman
ISBN: 9781503606814
Publication Date: 2018
Designed for the general reader and students of law, this is a concise history and analysis of the civil law tradition, which is dominant in most of Europe, all of Latin America, and many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The fourth edition is fully updated to include the latest developments in the field and to correct and update historical details gleaned from newly-published research on Roman and Medieval law. In the past ten years, the legal profession has changed radically, with the growing international ubiquity of large law firms operating across borders (which was previously a uniquely American phenomenon). This new edition updates the book from the post-Soviet era to ongoing current issues, including Brexit and the status of the European Union. It discusses how civil law codes have shifted in some countries to adapt to modern and changing ideologies and also includes brand-new material on legal education, which is of central importance to the legal profession today.
Great Legal Traditions by John W. Head
ISBN: 9781594609572
Publication Date: 2011
Great Legal Traditions: Civil Law, Common Law, and Chinese Law in Historical and Operational Perspective draws on the nearly thirty years of experience that the author has accumulated from working in and writing about a variety of legal systems around the world. After an introduction to the underlying concepts and values of comparative legal studies, Head embarks on a brisk six-chapter survey of European civil law, English and American common law, and Chinese law (both dynastic and contemporary). Each legal tradition is divided into two perspectives first historical and then operational. Numerous illustrations and biographical sketches bring the historical surveys to life, thereby setting the stage for a close examination of several key attributes of representative legal systems in each of the three traditions.
Charting the Divide Between Common and Civil Law by Thomas Lundmark
ISBN: 9780199738823
Publication Date: 2012
What does it mean when civil lawyers and common lawyers think differently? In Charting the Divide between Common and Civil Law, Thomas Lundmark provides a comprehensive introduction to the uses, purposes, and approaches to studying civil and common law in a comparative legal framework.Superbly organized and exhaustively written, this volume covers the jurisdictions of Germany, Sweden, England and Wales, and the United States, and includes a discussion of each country's legal issues, structure, and their general rules.

Additional Readings on Comparative Law

Students and faculty affiliated with UNC have access to various online legal treatises exploring comparative law topics through Oxford Scholarship Online. The relevant legal treatises for comparative law include:

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law by Mathias Reimann and Reinhard Zimmermann - A diverse survey and critical assessment of comparative law, with 48 essyas exploring various aspects of comparative law work and research.
Comparative Law by Uwe Kischel - A detailed overview of the various methods for conducting comparative law research, which also includes summaries of modern scholarship in this field the major legal traditions.
Comparative International Law by Anthea Roberts et al. - An examination of cross-country similarities and differences in international legal norms in a variety of international law topics.
Comparative Human Rights Law by Sandra Fredman - A review of various human rights issues across various foreign jurisdictions. Topics addressed include freedom of speech, the death penalty, and health care rights.

The following print resources also provide background information on comparative law:

Comparative Law by Mathias Siems
ISBN: 9781107182417
Publication Date: 2018
Comparative Law offers a thorough grounding in the subject for students and scholars of comparative law alike, critically debating both traditional and modern approaches to the subject and using examples from a range of legal systems gives the reader a truly global perspective. Covering essential academic debates and comparative law methodology, its contextualised approach draws on examples from politics, economics and development studies to provide an original contribution to topics of comparative law. This new edition: is fully revised and updated throughout to reflect contemporary research, contains more examples from many areas of law and there is also an increased discussion of the relevance of regional, international, transnational and global laws for comparative law. Suitable for students taking courses in comparative law and related fields, this book offers a fresh contextualised and cosmopolitan perspective on the subject.
Courts and Comparative Law by Mads Andenas (Editor); Duncan Fairgrieve (Editor)
ISBN: 9780198735335
Publication Date: 2015
While the role of comparative law in the courts was previously only an exception, foreign sources are now increasingly becoming a source of law in regular use in supreme and constitutional courts. There is considerable variation between the practices of courts and the role of comparative law,and methods remain controversial. In the US, the issue has been one of intense public debate and it is still one of the major dividing issues in the discussion about the role of the courts. Contributing to the existing discussion of the use of comparative law in the courts, this book provides an inclusive, coherent, and practical analysis of the relevant law and jurisprudence in comparative law in the courts. It examines the consequences for court procedures and the form of judgments,as well as how foreign sources are drawn upon in private international law, European law, administrative law, and constitutional law as well as before general courts. The book also includes case studies of comparative law used in particular spheres of the law, such as tort law and consumer law.Written by practising judges and lawyers as well as leading academics, this book serves as a central reference point concerning the role of comparative law before the courts.
Media Laws Across the World by Junhao Hong; Tuo-Yu Su
ISBN: 9781593328054
Publication Date: 2016
Hong and Su compare the evolution of media laws across the world, focusing on representative countries in North America, Western Europe and Asia and analyzes the political, economic, cultural and societal reasons for the evolution. In addition, their work also examines the challenges facing media laws in the new era of globalization and informatization. Moreover, the authors cover issues that are related to many newly emerged legal aspects such digital media law issues, libel law issues, copyright issues, and cyber-privacy issues. This book should be a very helpful tool not only for the readers in communication/media studies and legal studies, but also for those in political science and sociology. In addition, legal practitioners in media law may also be quite interested.
Comparative Legal Traditions in a Nutshell by Mary Ann Glendon; Paolo Carozza; Colin Picker
ISBN: 9780314285607
Publication Date: 2015
This nutshell offers a general introduction to comparative law that includes both an overview of the methods of comparative law as well as of the two most widespread legal traditions in the world: civil (or Romano-Germanic) law and common law. For both legal traditions, this expert discussion covers their history; legal structures, including constitutional systems, courts, and judicial review; the roles of central legal actors, including lawyers, judges, and scholars; an overview of civil and criminal procedure; the principal sources of law and divisions of substantive law; and the judicial process. Throughout, the discussion also includes references to the place and the importance of supranational law and institutions and their impact on the civil law and common law traditions in Europe.