Need to do some research involving Chinese law, or wish to keep up with developments in Chinese law? Please check out Westlaw China! This resource from Thomson Reuters aims to be a comprehensive database of and about Chinese law, with content in both English and Chinese.
Westlaw China contains a number of discrete types of content, including:
- Laws and Regulations – including more than 1,000,000 promulgated by Chinese government agencies at central, provisional, municipality, and autonomous region levels since 1949, with over 20,000 of the most important laws, regulations, and international treaties translated into English
- Legal Topics – interpolate key elements of laws and cases, categorized by attorney editors under the Key Number System to facilitate research; they currently provide 14 legal topics in English, covering more than 7,600 legal issues
- Case Headnotes – are provided in both Chinese and English; Westlaw China currently provides over 4,600 headnotes in English; full text of case judgments available in Chinese (almost 2,000,000, sourced from Supreme People’s Court and local courts in 31 provinces, municipalities under the Central Government and autonomous regions, as well as special courts such as maritime courts)
- Articles – over 2,500 articles by lawyers, judges, and other professionals discuss, analyze, and study topics and difficult problems in various practice areas
- Current Awareness – updated several times per day to provide the latest legal and business information on adopted and proposed legislation, courts and cases, government policies, news, and statistics
- Legal Glossary – provides over 6,600 bilingual terms and expressions, with precise English translations of Chinese legal terms
To get started from the library’s homepage, simply choose the “Research” menu, then the “Databases” page, as shown below. Westlaw China will be located on this page (under “W”).
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