Title: International Law Library

Source/Sponsoring Agency: World Legal Information Institute

URL: http://www.worldlii.org/int/special/ihl/

Date Checked: 10/29/2010      Status: Active

Date Annotated: 10/28/2010

Topics: Comparative Law; International Law

Other keywords: Court decisions; Legal Research; WorldLII; BAILII; AustLII; HKLII; NZLII; PacLII; SAFLII; GLIN; Treaties

Contents: Constituting the latest effort of the Free Access to Law Movement, the International Law Library is a shared collection of free materials offered by the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) and six other collaborating LIIs (BAILII, HKLII, NZLII, PacLII, SAFLII, and GLIN). Composed of 76 databases and containing almost 100,000 searchable documents, it lauds itself as “the most comprehensive free access international law research infrastructure on the Internet.” Its contents continue to grow and include decisions of International Courts and Tribunals, treaties and international agreements, international law journals, and law reform publications. Launched by Justice Sir Kenneth Keith of the International Court of Justice in September, 2010, the Library is being developed through AustLII under a 2009-10 Australian Research Council LIEF (Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities) project that also involves several partnering institutions. In addition to assisting with funding and contributing to the contents of the Library, AustLII also provides visitors to the Library with the use of its Sino search engine. Databases may be searched individually, in groups, or all at once, and searches may be repeated over all of these options. In addition to database searches, a “Catalog and Websearch” option is also available, as well as a “Law on Google” search. An advanced search option is available for the Databases. Especially useful is a quick retrieval feature, “LawCite,” that allows documents to be obtained by simply by entering a citation, party name, court, year, etc. Documents are provided in PDF when available, and in HTML format otherwise.

Author of Annotation: A. Emerson