Foreign Legal Research: Latin America

Like any other foreign jurisdiction, researching the law of Latin America involves checking sources related to international and national law. There are treaties, trade agreements, as well as sources for each specific country within the region.

Treaties: General

For regional treaties, the first stop is the OAS Treaty Series, most of which is available at the OAS web site together with status information. The OAS has published a Compendium of Bilateral Investment Treaties for the Western Hemisphere and the full-text of all trade agreements bilateral and multilateral, as well as Inventory of the Competition Policy Agreements, Treaties and Other Arrangements Existing in the Western Hemisphere.

Treaties: Trade Agreements

There are several trade organizations, based on agreements, including NAFTA, MERCOSUR and the Andean Community.

NAFTA

The North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA") of 1994 is the successor of the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement. This is important because many of the features of NAFTA are continuous with this previous agreement and so are many of the resources.

The three parties to NAFTA (United States, Canada and Mexico) also signed supplemental agreements:

Dispute settlement documents are available online and you can join an email list to receive news updates on panel decisions and reports.

There are various government web sites which may provide information about NAFTA:

Research guides for NAFTA include:

MERCOSUR

It is more difficult to find information about Mercosur, particularly because none of it is in English. Mercosur is a trade group that includes Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.  Most of the information that is available is in Spanish and Portuguese.  For information about MERCOSUR, consult:

ANDEAN COMMUNITY

Finally, there is the Andean Community which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. In addition to resources on its own web site, including treaties and legislation, and official documents, some of the important documents are available from the OAS Trade Unit in English.


Countries of Latin America

There are few print sources for laws from Latin and Central America available at Boston University. Some of the materials related to foreign legal research contain information on Central and Latin American countries. There are general as well as country specific resource for many Latin American countries available on the Internet.

Additionally, there are several ongoing projects to list government and legal resources for Latin and Central American countries, including:

General Internet Resources

Country Specific Resources

As with any research questions, please stop by the Pappas Reference Desk. A reference librarian can assist you with your project, or submit a research appointment request or email the Reference staff your question.


Page maintained by Terri Gallego-O'Rourke
Last updated: August 2006
January 3, 2008