Luxembourg: IALS Library Guides

Guide last updated by Hester Swift, October 2025

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a constitutional monarchy and unitary state. It was a founder member of the European Union and is a party to the Benelux Economic Union.

Luxembourgish is the national language, but French is used for legislation and there are three administrative and judicial languages: German, French and Luxembourgish.

IALS holds both primary and secondary legal material for Luxembourg.

The supreme source of law is the Constitution of 1868, as amended. The current consolidated version is on the official Légilux website, in French, and Constitute has an English version updated to 2009.

Current and historical English translations of the constitution are included in HeinOnline's World Constitutions Illustrated collection, to which IALS Library subscribes.

IALS also holds various printed versions, including the following:

• Thewes, Marc, La nouvelle constitution luxembourgeouise annotée 2023 (Larcier 2023);
• Constitutions of Europe: texts collected by the Council of Europe Venice Commission (Martinus Nijhoff 2004) - volume 2 includes an English translation of the Luxembourg Constitution updated to 2000.

A major modernisation of the constitution was concluded in December 2022 and the new text came into force in July 2023: see Chamber of Deputies dossier. IALS Library holds a collection of conference papers concerning the reforms: La refonte de la constitution luxembourgeoise en débat, Jörg Gerkrath, Étienne Cerexhe and others (eds), Larcier 2010.

Codes
Since 2015, the codes have not been updated officially in print format, but current versions of all of them are on Légilux, under 'Codes et recueils'.

IALS Library holds commercially-published annotated editions of the main codes, including the following recent titles:

• Code civil (10th edn, Pasicrisie Luxembourgeoise 2024);
• Nouveau code de procédure civil: Code de commerce (10th edn, Pasicrisie Luxembourgeoise 2024);
• Code penal: Code de procédure pénale (10th edn, Pasicrisie Luxembourgeoise 2024).

Individual laws and regulations
Legislation is published in the official gazette, Mémorial: journal officiel du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg / Amtsblatt des Grossherzogtums Luxemburg (Service Central de Législation,1832 - ). Series A of the Mémorial publishes laws and regulations, while Series B publishes administrative documents. IALS does not hold it, but it is on Légilux with an extensive archive; Légilux also includes consolidated versions of legislative instruments.

Historical laws and regulations can be found in Pasinomie luxembourgeoise: recueil des lois, décrets, arrêtés..., which was published from 1830 until 1993. IALS Library holds it from 1950/51 to 1993 (vol.s 26 to 65).

The leading series of law reports is Pasicrisie luxembourgeoise, which publishes selected court decisions (and commentary on the law). IALS holds it from volume 1 (1881) to date.

Cases from the higher courts are freely available online:

• Conseil d'Etat: see Rechercher une décision (ArianeWeb);
• Cour Constitutionelle: decisions appear in the Mémorial, Series A;
• Jurisprudence: official site with decisions of the Cour Constitutionnelle, Cour de Cassation, Cour Administrative and other courts and tribunals.

For information about the court system in Luxembourg (in English), see the Justice section of the government's official portal.

IALS has a small collection of books on the law of Luxembourg. Recent titles include the following:

• Séverine Menétrey, Procédure civile luxembourgeoise: approche comparative (2nd edn, Larcier 2023)
• Monique Watgen, Successions et donations (6th edn, Larcier 2023)
• Mike Schwebag, Medical law in Luxembourg (Kluwer Law International 2024)
• Pascal Ancel and André Prum, Réformer le droit des contrats?: analyse comparée autour du droit luxembourgeois (Larcier 2020)
• Françoise Hilger, Droit familial luxembourgeois: union et désunion du couple après la Loi du 27 juin 2018 (2nd edn, Larcier 2020)
• Gaston Vogel, Traité de procédure pénale (Promoculture-Larcier 2019)
• Jean-Pierre Winandy, Manuel de droit des sociétés (3rd edn, Legitech 2019)

For our other holdings, see Library Search.

IALS Library holds one journal for this jurisdiction: Annales du Droit Luxembourgeois, vol.1, 1991- (Bruylant, 1992 - ).

Useful starting points for researching the law of Luxembourg include:

Nicolas Henckes and Laurence Raphael, Luxembourg – Description of the Legal System and Legal Research (Globalex, 2020);

Andrew Grossman, Finding the Law: the Micro-states and Small Jurisdictions of Europe (Globalex, 2024);

LERIS (Lëtzeburger Rechts Informations System), an online law bibliography compiled at the University of Luxembourg;

Luxembourg section of the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) website - links to key websites;

Library of Congress, Guide to Law Online: Luxembourg.