Guide to foreign and international legal citation

Today I learnt about the Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citation.

It's produced by the good people at NYU. Not only does it cover legal citations in various jurisdictions worldwide, it also includes citation guides for international organisations, tribunals, treaties and law.

The first edition (2006) is available online to download at: 

www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv1/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__library/documents/documents/ecm_dlv_006388.pdf

The second edition (2009) is published by Aspen Publishers.

Two sources for finding country constitutions

Today I learnt about two sources for finding county constitutions.

The first is World Constitutions Illustrated, a module of the subscription service HeinOnline. It contains the current constitution for every country, in the original language and in English.  It also includes commentary and historical versions of constitutions.
http://home.heinonline.org/ 

The second is Constitution Finder, a global directory of constitutions online. It's made available by volunteers at the University of Richmond School of Law, who endeavour to keep the links as up-to-date as possible.
http://confinder.richmond.edu/index.html

Australian legal abbreviations

Today I learnt where to find Australian legal abbreviations.

Answer: Monash University Law Library’s legal abbreviation guide. Short and sweet today.

http://guides.lib.monash.edu/legal-abbreviations

Library of Congress Research Guides for Foreign Law

Today I learnt that the Library of Congress provides guides to conducting legal research for a selection of countries.

They're along the same lines as IALS's research guides by jurisdiction but they cover different countries. Today I needed to find out how to access Lebanese legislation, which IALS does not produce an online guide for. Each guide includes:

• an introduction to the legal system
• official sources of law
• print resources
• web resources

Library of Congress Research Help: Foreign and International Law
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/foreign.php

FLAG: Foreign LAw Guide

Today I learnt that FLAG stands for Foreign LAw Guide.

According to the website FLAG is "a collaborative Internet gateway to the holdings of foreign, international and comparative law in UK universities and national libraries" and acts as "a gateway to foreign, international and comparative law collections held within UK university and national libraries".

You can search by country, international organisation, free text, type of legal literature, or location of contributing library. Your search results provide a description of the holdings, details of where it is held, and a link to the catalogue of library with the holdings.

FLAG won the Wallace Breem Memorial Award in 2002.

http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/flag/flag.htm

IALS Legal Rearch Guides by Jurisdiction

What did I learn today?

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies provides legal research guides on its website that suggest which resources should be used when researching foreign jurisdictions. They cover hardcopy and electronic resources available in IALS library but can also be used as a general reference tool. I found them very helpful for some research I was doing this afternoon. Thank you IALS!

http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/guides/research_guides.htm