Jurisprudence & Document Databases

Download our guide to Researching International Human Rights Law for a full overview of the available international human rights law databases and websites, for accessing treaty texts, judgments, decisions, resolutions, and other interpretations. The links below identify just a few of these tools.

Use the International Justice Resource Center’s custom Google search form to search the websites of the African, European, and Inter-American human rights bodies, as well as select other databases, for decisions on complaints and other documents. Note, however, that many of the databases listed below allow more advanced and tailored searches.

While each human rights body generally makes its decisions, recommendations, reports, and other documents available on its own website, those sites are often difficult to effectively search. However, other online databases allow users to search the documents of multiple bodies simultaneously. Useful available search facilities, arranged by scope, are listed below.

In addition to case-specific decisions, researchers should not overlook general treaty interpretation (such as the UN treaty bodies’ general comments and UN special rapporteurs’ reports) or human rights monitoring bodies’ reports on States’ compliance with their treaty obligations. Further, domestic courts’ decisions are an important and often rich source of international law interpretation and application.

Multi-System Databases

  • WorldCourts provides a searchable database of case decisions from the United Nations, African, and Inter-American human rights bodies’ complaint mechanisms, as well as judgments of internationalized criminal tribunals. The database is not absolutely up-to-date, and does not include decisions issued within the previous 6 to 12 months.
  • The University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Library houses a wealth of decisions from regional and UN human rights bodies and international criminal tribunals, as well as secondary sources and country condition research tools, accessible through the principal search page. The website also allows users to search 14 external sites (including IGOs, national government sites, and NGOs) at the same time, for any document, by keyword.
  • ESCR-Net Caselaw Database is a searchable repository of domestic and international jurisprudence on economic, social, and cultural rights.

United Nations Bodies

  • To look up any UN document using the document symbol (such as E/C.12/GMB/1 or A/HRC/27/L.1), type in www.undocs.org followed by the symbol number (e.g., www.undocs.org/E/C.12/GMB/1 or www.undocs.org/A/HRC/27/L.1).
  • The Universal Human Rights Index of United Nations Documents provides a database of Universal Periodic Review documents and treaty bodies and special procedures’ observations and recommendations, searchable by keyword, country, right, body, affected group, and document symbol.
  • The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights maintains searchable databases of treaty body documents and Charter body documents, which include decisions, reports, and jurisprudence. These are searchable by: document symbol, State, body, and type of document, but not by keyword.
  • To conduct a keyword search of jurisprudence regarding individual complaints decided by the treaty bodies, use the Jurisprudence Database. 

Other Universal Bodies

Regional Bodies

  • WorldCourts provides a searchable database of case decisions from the African and Inter-American human rights bodies’ complaint mechanisms. The database is not absolutely up-to-date, and does not include decisions issued within the previous 6 to 12 months.
  • CEJIL’s Summa database provides decisions and judgments from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as statistical information and other data.
  • The African Human Rights Case Law Analyzer is a searchable database of human rights decisions from supranational judicial and quasi-judicial bodies in Africa, including the African Commission and Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of Children, ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, SADC Tribunal, and East African Court of Justice.
  • The regional human rights bodies also provide the texts of their decisions online, at the following links:

Domestic Courts

  • WorldLII, the World Legal Information Institute, is a collection of smaller databases containing case law, legislation, treaties, reports and articles from international courts and the domestic courts of more than 20 countries. Search the international law library for international (and not domestic) documents, or the international courts and tribunals library for international jurisprudence (currentness varies by body). The focus of WorldLII and the subsidiary country and regional LII bases is weighted toward current and former Commonwealth countries and the Pacific region. See the list of information available (for example, jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia from 2006 onward), by country, here.
  • Google Scholar is a good source of U.S. judicial decisions, from both state and federal courts, and also contains legal scholarship.
  • ESCR-Net is a searchable database of domestic and international jurisprudence related to economic, social and cultural rights.
  • UNHCR’s Refworld contains an online database of international and domestic judicial decisions and other documents relevant to refugee and asylum law.
  • The University of Michigan Law School’s Refugee Caselaw Site provides a searchable database of asylum-related decisions from the highest courts of 33 countries.

International Criminal Tribunals