LibGuides: Human Rights Studies: Primary Sources

Human Rights Documents and Other Primary Sources

American Prison Writing Archive (APWA)
The APWA currently hosts over 2,100 essays, which are solicited through prisoner-support newsletters and a call for essays in Prison Legal News. Anyone with first-hand experience inside US carceral institutions today is eligible to submit essays. This includes prison employees and volunteers, who materially shape the day-to-day conditions in which incarcerated people live, and who are in turn deeply affected by their work. A truly inclusive vision of life inside requires the testimony of everyone who lives, works, or volunteers in prisons today. In this light, readers will note the under-representation of women, trans, and gender nonconforming people in the archive. We invite all APWA visitors who work with or know incarcerated people to help us in increasing contributions from these populations, as well as from prison workers and volunteers.
Amnesty International
Search reports, news, and other documents compiled and created by Amnesty International.

Basic Documents on Human Rights by The Late Ian Brownlie; Guy S. Goodwin-Gill
ISBN: 0199279837
Publication Date: 2006-08-03
This new edition of the established text Basic Documents on Human Rights provides an extensive collection of key documents covering all elements of the subject, accompanied by authoritative commentary and bibliographic annotation. The result is a clear and accurate set of the most importanthuman rights instruments adopted by the United Nations and its agencies, by regional organizations and other actors in the field. This text contains the absolute essentials for a thorough study of human rights, mapping well onto both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It provides theconvenience of an indispensable 'one-stop' collection for research and reference needs, with guidance from the leading experts in the field. Updated to include key new developments in human rights law such as Protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, amending the control system of theConvention; the optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (2002); Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on Women in African States (2003).Online Resource CentreThe fifth edition is also accompanied by an Online Resource Centre which features annotated links to relevant sites and documents, capitalising on the authors' expertise in the subject.

Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research
The Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research, based in the Columbia University Libraries and Information Services, supports the community of teachers, students, researchers, and law and social justice advocates working in the multidisciplinary sphere of human rights. The Center pursues three programmatic directions: building research collections, supporting and engaging in human rights education efforts, and developing events and collaborations related to human rights documentation and research. They are the official repository for the archives of major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International USA, the Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights First, and Human Rights Watch.

Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)
The Digital National Security Archive contains the most comprehensive set of declassified government documents available. The resource now includes 40 collections consisting of over 94,000 meticulously indexed documents, with more than 650,000 total pages. Each of these collections, compiled by top scholars and experts, exhaustively covers the most critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century.
HeinOnline
Hein Online contains the full text of numerous legal journals, Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Register, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Foreign Relations of the U.S., Presidential Executive Orders, Congressional Record, U.S. Statutes at Large, and other documents from the executive, congressional and judicial branches of the U.S. government.
Human Rights Documents Online
Full text searchable online version of the Human Rights Documents Project in microform. will ultimately contain all human rights documents collected by the Human Rights Internet (HRI) in Ottawa in Canada since 1980. These documents emanate from 483 non-governmental human rights organizations (NGOs) worldwide, some of which have a universal scope, whilst others focus on the attainment of human rights in a specific area of the world.
Human rights Studies Online
Searchable database of documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. The collection takes a case study approach, providing primary and secondary materials for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than 30 additional subjects. This database provides access to books, primary documents, audio, maps, images, and video and spans 1900-2010.

Human Rights Watch
You can filter information by country or topic and find videos & photos as well as reports.
Non-Governmental Organization Search Engine
Developed by the GODORT, the Government Documents Round Table of the American Library Association, this searches content from websites of a growing list of NGO's around the world. Sites were chosen based on their consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and also collated from University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, Duke University Libraries' NGO Research Guide, and the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (WANGO)
Security Council Report
SCR’s mission is to advance the transparency and effectiveness of the UN Security Council. We seek to achieve this by making available timely, balanced, high-quality information about the activities of the Council and its subsidiary bodies; by convening stakeholders to deepen the analysis of issues before the Council and its working methods and performance; by encouraging engagement of the Council with all member states and civil society; and by building capacity on Council practice and procedure through assisting incoming members and other training and assistance programmes. SCR is independent and impartial; it advocates transparency but does not take positions on the issues before the Council.
UN Documentation: Human Rights
A thorough guide, with links to full-text documents, to major UN human rights material.
United Nations Digital Library
The online catalogue of UN documents and publications. The Digital Library includes UN documents, voting data, speeches, maps, and open access publications. The platform provides access to UN-produced materials in digital format and bibliographic records for print UN documents starting in 1979. System features include linked data between related documentation such as resolutions, meeting records and voting, and refining of searches by UN body, agency or type of document.

Case law

Thanks for Prof. Ayten Gundogdu for many of these recommendations!

Nexis Uni for Case Law
Under Guided Search, select "Cases" and then select your jurisdiction (federal or state). You can search by citation name or keyword/topic.
Google Scholar for case law
Find more information on what case law you can find in Google Scholar and a video tutorial on how to search for it here.
Justia
The law belongs to all of us, and Justia is proud to offer free access to federal and state court decisions, codes, and regulations. We also provide the full text of the Annotated US Constitution, as well as recent dockets and selected case filings from the US federal district and appellate courts.
FindLaw
FindLaw's Cases and Codes section contains resources and links for both state and federal laws. This includes resources pertaining to constitutions, statutes, cases and more. Run a search for case summaries or select a jurisdiction to browse applicable laws.
Oyez
This website contains a wide range of primary and secondary materials related to the U.S. Supreme Court. Of particular note, Oyez.com offers audio recordings of selected oral arguments.
Caselaw Access Project
The Caselaw Access Project is making all U.S. case law freely accessible online. With the Caselaw Access Project API (CAPAPI) and bulk data service, we can share 40 million pages of published U.S. court cases. Learn more about how to search here.
Refworld Collection of Case Law
Searchable database by keyword and country.

For more compilations of case law resources, check out these guides.

Free Sources of Case Law
From the Georgetown Law Library
How To Find Free Case Law Online
From the Library of Congress
Free Legal Research Resources
From the Harvard Law School Library