Primary sources are the actual laws and rules issued by governing bodies in the form of constitutions, statues, cases and regulations. Although your research should start with secondary sources, you should read the primary sources as part of any substantial research project to ensure the accuracy and currency of your statements. Generally, the constitutions of other countries are widely available, and available in English translation. Statutes and codes are frequently available in free online sources, but they might not be available in English if that is not the country's official language. And caselaw and jurisprudence may be the hardest to find, particularly below the Supreme Court or Court of Last Resort level. Translations of primary authority are never official, but may be needed to work with materials in other languages. Machine translation, including Google, is your most likely option but can be subject to errors and problems with translation of legal jargon.
Hein Online's World Constitutions Illustrated (subscription database): Current and previous constitutions, in official languages and English translations. The World Constitutions Library includes constitutional histories and commentaries in treatises, law review articles (in the Hein Online Law Journals Library), and country studies.
Oxford Constitutions of the World (Subscription database): Full-text English translations of constitutions, with notes on amendments and other background information. The Oxford database also includes a bibliography of resources on the country’s constitutional law and historical documents.
Constitute Constitutions Project: A free resource for making world constitutions available and searchable. Constitutions are available in English translation. Articles of constitutions are tagged by topic so they can be browsed or searched. Topics include international law, the judiciary, elections, and rights and duties.
Most countries also make the text of their constitution available on their portals for legislation and statutes.
Foreign Law Guide (subscription ends 12/1/2025): The Foreign Law Guide lists statute sources, including those available online and any translations into English. The Subject section includes citations to individual statutes by topic, frequently with links, and subject-specific secondary sources.
Law Library of Congress Guide to Law Online: The guide is arranged by branches of government and includes links to legislatures, gazettes, and other sources for codes and statutes.
Global-Regulation (subscription ends 12/31/2025): Searchable portal database of regulations in the US and foreign jurisdictions, including the European Union. Searches index terms and links to regulations on government sites, sometimes with a machine-generated English translation.
CommonLII: Provides free access to databases from 60 commonwealth and common law jurisdictions via legal information institutes.
LSU Law Center: Civil Law in the World: Links to Civil Codes and legislation for civil law countries, with notes on language. Some English translations are linked.
Northwestern University: List of Foreign Governments: Links to legislatures, central banks, statistical agencies, and foreign ministries
EU N-Lex: A European Union common gateway for searching national statutes and official gazettes for EU member states. Template search for words in the title, text, or by date or number, with search available in English using EuroVoc keywords. Multi-country search is a comparison feature for same-subject statutes from two EU countries. The Non-EU Countries page links to the legislative websites of non-EU states, with descriptions and notes on language and translations.
Legislationline: OCSE database of European constitutional law and legislation on human rights. The site includes some translated statutes and constitutional articles, particularly constitutions, criminal codes, human rights laws, and laws on public administration. Find laws by jurisdiction or subject.
vLex Justis (Subscription database): Search or browse legal publications from Latin America and Europe with a few materials from Asian and African countries. The collections include official gazettes, codes, and legislation, with the most content available for Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The database also includes legal books, journals, and newspapers. Set up an individual password to use the automated translation tool and to save documents.
WIPO Lex: National laws, treaties, and judgments on intellectual property, with related information. Includes some civil codes as well. Some laws available in English translation, but most are with a machine translation feature.
ECOLEX: Environmental law database with national court decisions and legislation. There are English language abstracts for some legislation and jurisprudence.
ILO NATLEX: Database of national labour, social security and related human rights legislation.
Major cases and highest court cases are sometimes published in official gazettes. Official gazettes or official journals are official publications of a country’s legal materials. Text of court judgments, or summaries, may be found in law journals of other countries, yearbooks, or in foreign newspapers. Try Hein Online's Law Journal Library and Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, and vLex Global, for journals and yearbooks which might report on foreign jurisprudence.
WorldLII has links to courts or text of cases.
Guide to Law Online (Law Library of Congress) has links to courts and to sources for case law.
vLex Global (subscription database) has full-text content including some case reporters from Europe and Latin America.
European e-justice portal has links to courts of the European Union member states, plus information on their legal systems and some subject areas of interest to individuals like family law, small claims, and insolvency.
CODICES: Database of constitutional law cases from around the world, indexed using a common "systematic thesaurus." Judgments include an English-language summary, some with full-text in the vernacular, some with English or French language translation of full-text.
WIPO Lex: Includes judgments on intellectual property, along with national laws and treaties. PDFs or original documents, citations, and machine translation are available.
ECOLEX: Environmental law database with national court decisions and legislation. There are English language abstracts for some legislation and jurisprudence.
China
Germany
Japan
Republic of Korea
Switzerland
United Arab Emirates
Vietnam
