See our international law research guides: Public International Law, United Nations, Council of Europe, European Union and Private International Law.
All the subscription databases mentioned on this tab are available via the Law Databases page.
HeinOnline's World Treaty Library includes the UN Treaty Series, the League of Nations Treaty Series , treaties involving the United States and substantial numbers of historical treaties; it also includes Hein's World Treaty Index.
Lexis+® UK has treaties involving the United States.
Westlaw International has treaties involving the United States, EU treaties, and treaties concerning tax, arbitration and the environment.
IBFD Online has tax treaties.
TradeLawGuide has WTO and GATT treaties.
Freely available treaty resources
Many large treaty collections are available free of charge online, on websites including:-
WorldLII's International Treaties Collection
African Union, ASEAN, the Council of Europe, WIPO, UNCTAD and other intergovernmental organisations' websites
UK Treaties Online and other national sites - many national treaty websites are listed on Eagle-i, tagged with the name of the jurisdiction and the word 'treaties'.
The FLARE Index to Treaties gives treaty titles, UNTS and other citations, dates and places of signature, with links to full-text treaties where available on the internet.
Oxford Reports on International Law (ORIL) has cases from international courts and tribunals, UN committees and municipal (domestic) courts. IALS Library's subscription covers five ORIL modules: International Law in Domestic Courts, International Courts of General Jurisdiction, International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law and International Investment Claims.
Westlaw International Materials has cases from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Iran-US Claims Tribunal and the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia (all under 'Administrative Materials').
Westlaw UK has European Human Rights Reports, which publishes important cases from the European Court of Human Rights.
Lexis+® UK has a fairly comprehensive collection of cases from the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the law report, Butterworths Human Rights Cases; it also has ICJ cases and the International Tax Law Reports.
HeinOnline has Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) cases (in the Foreign and International Law Resources Database); ICJ cases (in the United Nations Law Collection); and cases from the Nuremburg International Military Tribunal and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (in the World Trials Library).
See also: - individual series such as International Law Reports and ICSID Reports, which are available online via the Catalogue.
- free resources such as WorldLII's International Courts and Tribunals Collection, the ICJ website and other court/tribunal sites.
Westlaw International Materials (IM) has a collection called 'International Arbitration Materials' (via link on IM homepage) which includes awards by the London Court of International Arbitration, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the International Chamber of Commerce, the WTO/GATT and other bodies. Westlaw IM also has Iran-US Claims Tribunal Decisions (see 'International Materials Index', or use search facility).
TradeLawGuide is a database of WTO and GATT dispute cases, with commentary and related material, a treaty article citator and a case citator.
Lexis+® UK has WTO/GATT cases.
HeinOnline has Reports of International Arbitral Awards, the UN series covering disputes between states, 1798 onwards. (RIAA is also on the UN website).
Oxford Reports on International Law has an International Investment Claims module, covering cases from arbitral bodies including ICSID, the ICC International Court of Arbitration, the London Court of International Arbitration and the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
See also: online versions of individual series, such as ICSID Reports, International Law Reports and Investment Arbitration Reporter; these titles can be accessed via the Library Catalogue,
If you are looking for a specific journal article:
Look up the journal on the IALS Library Catalogue. If it is available online, there should be a link to the appropriate database.
If you are looking for any articles on a particular topic:
Encore can be used to search for articles across numerous online platforms, law and non-law. For technical reasons it does not search all of our e-resources, however: for example, it does not cover Lexis+, and it only searches Westlaw UK on site.
For a thorough literature search, try the following individual databases (via the Law Databases page):
Westlaw UK, Journals collection: about twenty-five full-text international/European law journals + abstracts from many more.
Westlaw International Materials, World Journals collection: includes over 120 international law journals published in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
Index to Legal Periodicals: indexes international (and other) law journals published in the US and elsewhere.
HeinOnline: see Law Journal Library, Foreign & International Law Resources Database, Harvard Research in International Law and Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (the latter covers many international law journals and yearbooks).
Lexis+® UK: the International tab has more than ninety international law journals and the Content tab has about twenty-five.
Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law (Recueil des cours): large collection of papers given at the prestigious summer courses held each year at the Hague Academy of International Law.
Le Doctrinal: a French journal index that covers some international law titles.
Encore Discovery can be used to search within our e-book holdings, but for technical reasons it does not cover everything that we have: for example, it does not cover HeinOnline's Legal Classics module or the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (more about Encore).
Individual e-books are listed on the classic Library Catalogue, but the classic catalogue does not search within e-books, it only searches their titles, subject headings and (where available) contents lists.
The following e-book collections include a substantial number of titles focusing on international law: Cambridge Core Books Online, Brill Online, Oxford Legal Research Library, Oxford Scholarship Online, Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law, Elgaronline, Bloomsbury Law E-books Collection, HeinOnline's Legal Classics, eBook Central.
See also: The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (OUP), which comprises more than 2,000 scholarly essays on international law topics, with bibliographies (access via Library Catalogue).