Researching Private International Law

Private International Law is the body of law that governs relationships between private individuals and entities across national borders. Its central concern is “choice of law” or the determination of which nation’s laws govern particular legal matters. Those matters may involve commercial transactions, such as cross-border sales and investments, family law issues (marriage, divorce, and child custody), or even tort actions if the parties involved reside in different countries.

Researching issues of Private International Law can be daunting because it may require you to become familiar with international sources of law as well as the domestic law of one or more foreign countries. If this is your first time wading into these research waters, try these strategies as you get started.

Consult a Guide or Two or Ten

As mentioned in the Legal Beagle Blog many times before, it’s never a bad idea to start your research with guides. Legal Research or LawGuides are a handy references to primary and secondary sources specific to a particular area of law. You’ll need to locate guides that discuss finding treaties and other international agreements, which are primary sources in international law. A popular guide to get you started with treaty research is the Library of Congress’s Researching Treaties and International Agreements. GlobaLex, an open-access electronic publication supported by the NYU School of Law, publishes popular guides on international and foreign legal research, including GlobaLex: An Introduction to Sources for Treaty Research.

Because Private International Law also involves disputes among individuals or business entities from differing nation-states rather than disputes among the nation-states themselves, you’ll also need to find guides that direct you to foreign domestic legal sources or the laws of the other nations at issue in your matter. Both the Library of Congress and GlobaLex have robust guides to foreign law: the Library of Congress Foreign Law and GlobaLex Foreign Law Research, respectively. Another excellent source of foreign law guidance is Brill’s Foreign Law Guide, which is a subscription service provided by the law library for students and faculty. 
Your RWU Librarians also work hard to create useful guides for our students, including, but not limited to, International & Foreign Research, Private International Research, and International Business Transactions. These guides provide not only guidance on general internet resources but also materials specifically available to you through the law library.

Still don’t have just the right guide for your purposes? Try a search in your favorite internet browser for “(law or library) & guide and (international or foreign) & law.” Plenty of educational institutions and international organizations create research guides. If you find one particularly helpful, let us know in the law library so that we can recommend it to other students.

Consult Secondary Sources

While it’s always good practice to consult secondary sources at the start of a research project, it can be critical in Private International Law, as international law and organizations often use highly specialized terminology and acronyms. Locating and reviewing secondary sources on your topic can provide you with valuable context and the definition of key terms and acronyms. Private International Law research will also require you to search for unfamiliar sources such as treaties and foreign domestic law. Your search for those primary sources will be much easier if you find relevant citations to them in secondary sources first. As you are no doubt already aware, you have many options for finding secondary sources. Westlaw Precision and Lexis+ will both allow you to search for secondary sources under the International Law Practice Area. HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library also offers a comprehensive collection of International & Non-U.S. Law Journals. 

Locate Treaties

After consulting guides and secondary sources, your next task may be to locate the treaties related to your research. The research guides you consulted may have pointed out many resources that you can reliably use to find treaties. However, for your purposes as an RWU Law student, the treaty sources you need should be available to you through RWU’s HeinOnline subscription. Their U.S. Treaties and Agreements database includes all treaties and international agreements to which the U.S. has been a party from the country's inception to the present. The collection includes a Library Guide of its own with additional information about the collection, textual search tips, and a helpful training video. Looking for other bilateral or multilateral treaties? Then, try the HeinOnline World Treaty Library, which is the most expansive collection of world treaties, spanning from 1648 to the present. It also includes a helpful library guide. 

Locate Foreign Law Sources

This may very well be the trickiest part of your research. Once you determine which foreign law sources are relevant to your matter, you may need to locate them. In some cases, you may be able to do so using the general online sources that you find in guides. You may also discover the citations to primary sources that the law library can request for you through Interlibrary Loan. Keep in mind that some foreign primary sources are available through commercial databases such as Westlaw and Lexis. A couple of the significant challenges you will face include language accessibility and reporting expectations. The sources you seek may or may not be available in English or an official English format. Most foreign law guides will do their best to direct you to resources that offer English translations. However, you can also use online tools such as Google Translate to provide unofficial translations of sources. Also, keep in mind that in many nations, particularly civil law jurisdictions, you may not find the reporting of lengthy case decisions, but rather short decisions detailing the disposition of the cases. Thus, locating a particular court decision may be less important than finding commentary about the case and related cases in credible sources such as articles or yearbooks.

Apply the 10-minute Rule

If you get stuck on a research task for more than ten minutes, please reach out to your law librarians. We’re here to help you! Drop by or contact us for reference assistance Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. The library also provides individualized research consultations for students to help them develop research strategies tailored to their needs. To schedule a research consultation with a law librarian, contact us via Ask a Librarian, or by email at LawLibraryHelp@rwu.edu.

Private International Law research can be challenging but manageable. And we’re here to help you with anything you need.