Although there is no database that allows you to conduct a comprehensive keyword search across all laws from every country in the world in one place, Global-Regulation can at least help you efficiently run a search across laws and regulations from 95 countries at one time.
The laws and regulations available through this database are translated into English using machine translation. The machine translations enable you to conduct keyword searches across the text of these laws and regulations in English, but you should not rely on these translations for the basis of your legal arguments because machine translations may contain errors or be inaccurate.
However, Global-Regulation is still a valuable resource to assist with identifying whether legislation on a specific topic exists in certain countries and can help save you time with “survey-like” or comparative law projects, such as if you need to collect domestic laws on a particular subject from several foreign countries. Coverage in the database is currently at 95 countries with varying levels of depth of coverage for each country.
Within a result, the “Show Original” link will show the text of the law or regulation in the original language as a side-by-side comparison with the machine-translated English version.
Laws and regulations from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and other selected countries include direct links to where a PDF copy of the law or regulation is available through one of the country’s official government websites.
If a direct link for a law or regulation is not available through Global-Regulation, you can easily use the citation provided by this database to retrieve a copy of the law from the country’s legislature website.
Give this database a try the next time you work on a project involving foreign legal research!
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