International and regional courts and tribunals have been created to resolve international disputes, either between states, or between states and individuals. Jurisdiction is based on treaties or other agreements or resolutions. International courts interpret treaties and the principles of international law.
Databases and resources with caselaw from multiple courts are useful for finding cases on issues and topics in international law, for comparative or academic research, or for pleadings to courts with more limited bodies of caselaw.
Oxford Reports on International Law: Modules include international law cases from domestic courts, international criminal law, international human rights law, and others. Find cases by type, subject, jurisdiction, state party, or full-text search. Includes the Oxford Law Citator for citations, case information, and related resources. Case entries include instruments and cases cited.
UNHCR Refworld: Search caselaw on human rights and refugees by topic, country, or instrument, or full-text. Includes domestic as well as caselaw from international courts.
Global Health & Human Rights Database: Judgments from national and international courts on health and human rights topics.
International Crimes Database: Case search, by full-text or categories, for cases on international criminal law from national courts and international tribunals.
UNODC Sherloc database: Legislation and cases on transnational crimes (counterfeiting, cybercrime, drugs).
VLexJustis: Browse by jurisdiction to international law, then search within all international law cases or particular courts. Includes the ICJ, ICC, African Court on Human and Peoples Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, OHCHR, WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, and WTO.
ASIL publications report on important new cases from international courts and tribunals. Find them published in International Legal Materials, or in the blog ASIL International Law in Brief.
International Court of Justice: Principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Judgments on legal disputes between states, and advisory proceedings on questions referred by UN organs. Cases on borders and maritime boundaries, treaty obligations, questions of sovereignty and immunity, and on genocide and human rights.
International Criminal Court: Investigation and trial of individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The court has a Legal Tools Database of documents of the ICC, plus treaties, NGO publications, and decisions of other international courts and tribunals.
International Residual Mechanism Archives: Database of judgments and documents from the ICTY, ICTR, and other international criminal tribunals.
European Court of Justice: Interpretation of EU treaties and legislation. EU institutions and member states may bring appeals to the court. The ECJ's InfoCuria database can be searched by parties, date, case status, case number, type of document, subject matter, and references to legislation and caselaw, as well as full-text.
European Court of Human Rights. Enforcement of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court's HUDOC database includes searching by treaty article, keyword, domestic law, and international law. Other court sources for finding cases by topic include the Factsheets by Topic and the Knowledge Sharing Gateway.
Inter-American Court of Human Rights: A regional organization that interprets and enforces the American Convention on Human Rights. Search jurisprudence or use the Digesto Themis by treaty article. The Loyola IACHR Project has a case search and cases arranged by country, topic, and article, with summaries in English.
OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Cases based on individual petitions.
African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights: Cases brought by NGOs and individuals, based on Protocol 1 to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
Treaty Bodies of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: Nine of the treaty bodies may consider individual complaints or peititions. The state must be a party to the treaty and have accepted the Committee's competence to examine individual complaints. Find them using the OHCHR Jurisprudence Database, with filters by state or region, treaty body or treaty article, and issue.
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