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Researching foreign bilateral treaties, between nations other than the United States, can sometimes be difficult. Many nations deposit their bilateral treaties with repositories, such as the United Nations Treaty Collection. If you are unable to locate the text of a treaty through any of the more common resources, you may need to explore domestic resources for the jurisdiction you are researching. Frequently, countries will make their treaty information available online through the foreign policy arm of their government, publish treaties in a specific collection, or write a notice in a legal gazette.
International Legal Materials publishes primary source documents of importance to international law, including treaties and agreements. The List of Treaty Collections, while no longer updated, provides coverage of bilateral treaties entered into before the United Nations Treaty Series became the de facto repository for most bilateral treaties due to the requirement under article 102 Externalof the Charter of the United Nations for member states to register treaties with the Secretariat. Prior to the updates in the List of Treaty Collections, researchers would turn to the 1922 Manual of Collections of Treaties and of Collections Relating to Treaties, by Denys P. Myers. The Manual and The List of Treaty Collections is especially helpful in finding historic treaties that are not available in a digitized format. Both resources organizes treaties by continent, by topic and by country and provide coverage of treaties dating back into medieval times.
The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress.
Many nations provide online access to treaties they are a party to. You will find a selection of these websites below.
Official gazettes are primary sources of law published by national governments to disseminate new legislation, regulations, and decisions of governmental bodies. These publications may also contain other information including the text of international agreements, court decisions, official announcements, and government notices. For countries with civil law systems, the official gazette often serves as the sole source of the authoritative texts of laws until updated codes are published. In most countries, a law enters into force on the date of publication in the official gazette. The list below is by no means exhaustive, but is meant to illustrate different examples of gazettes. For a complete list of the Law Library's gazettes, please visit the Foreign Legal Gazette Collection. The Law Library also has a short video on navigating the Foreign Legal Gazettes collection.
Below you will find a list of selected legal reference materials relating to foreign treaty research from the Library of Congress collection. The List of Treaty Collections can be requested in the Newspaper and Periodical Reading Room, located one floor below the Law Library Reading Room in the Madison Building. The Manual of Collections of Treaties and of Collections Relating to Treaties can be requested in the Main Reading Room, but can also be accessed online through its catalog record below. International Legal Materials is available in the Law Library Reading Room.
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional digital content are provided when available.
Manual of Collections of Treaties and of Collections Relating to Treaties by The Law Library of Congress has many different foreign treaty collections. You can search the catalog for the country you are researching, or you can browse through KZ call numbers using the Browse search option.
The following titles are included as illustrative examples and link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional digital content are provided when available.
Recueil de Traites, Conventions et Autres Textes en Matiere de Justice Applicables en Republique du Benin.The Agreements of the People's Republic of China with Foreign Countries, 1949-1990 by | Treaty Citation | Publication Name | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| 8 ILM 454 | International Legal Materials | The first number refers to the publications’ volume, while the second number lists the specific page in the volume where the first page of the treaty can be found. |
