South America

Constituciones Hispanoamericas

The Constituciones Hispanoamericas website provides free online access to Spanish constitutions (both current and historical) and those of Latin American countries. The site forms part of the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes digital library which is hosted by the University of Alicante in Spain. As well as the catalogue of constitutions and related documents there is background and historical information on Spanish and Latin American constitutionalism and a page of related web links. The site is available in Spanish only.

Inter-American Court of Human Rights Database

Searchable summaries of Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) decisions, in English. Detailed summaries are available for some cases, covering the facts, procedural history, merits, and state compliance with the judgment; for other cases only a short abstract is provided. The database can be searched by case name, country, topic, treaty article and other criteria. It is an initiative of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. (For full IACHR judgments, in Spanish, see the Court’s own website.)

Latin American Government Documents Archive

The Latin American Government Documents Archive (LAGDA) is one of several resources managed by the Latin American Web Archiving Project, which is based at the University of Texas Libraries. Its aim is to preserve and make available archives of websites from the governments of 18 Latin American countries. The archived sites include documents and video and audio recordings. The records available start in 2005-6 and the project is ongoing. The materials can be selected from a list according to jurisdiction and government department and can also be searched by keywords.

Political Database of the Americas

A non governmental project maintained by the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, USA in collaboration with other bodies. It was started in 1995. A principal feature of the site is a study of the constitutions of the Latin American countries, with the full text of the relevant Constitution. For each country suggestions are made of additional supporting literature but only the bibliographical information is available. There is also background information about other topics including the electoral system and political parties of the countries.

Researching the law of Latin America

Online guide to Latin American law written by Teresa Miguel who is the author of several books and articles and was a public defender between 1994 and 2002. The guide was published in 2010 (and updated in 2022) on the Globalex website and made freely available by the Hauser Global Law School Program at the New York University School of Law. The author gives an introduction to the legal systems of Latin American jurisdictions and provides annotated links to useful web resources for finding the law of Latin American countries and the international law of Latin America.

Base de Datos en Español

WorldLII (World Legal Information Institute) database of court decisions in the Spanish language, covering the Central American Court of Justice, the Court of Justice of the Andean Community, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, NAFTA and the Mexican and Venezuela domain names tribunals. WorldLII is a legal information portal developed by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) and a number of partner institutions (BAILII, AustLII, HKLII, CanLII, NZLII). The search interface and contents are all in Spanish.

Inter-American system of human rights: a research guide

Online guide to the inter-American system of human rights written by Cecilia Cristina Naddeo who is a JSD (Doctor of the Science of the Law) candidate at Stanford Law School. The guide was published in 2010 on the Globalex website and made freely available by the Hauser Global Law School Program at the New York University School of Law. The guide describes the historical development of the Inter-American system of human rights focusing on the institutional features of the system.

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