IUCAT and WorldCat are good sources for locating books on particular topics in human rights law. The best searches are subject searches, but remember that you will have to use the advanced search template to search for subjects. "Human Rights" is itself a subject heading, but consider using narrower headings, such as "right to food," or "transitional justice." If you are researching the law of a particular treaty, use the treaty title as a subject heading." For example, a search for the subject "Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms" retrieves more than 100 titles in the Maurer Law Library, many of which provide a basic, but comprehensive introduction to the development of law under the European Human Rights Convention.
If you want to expand your search, consider doing your search again in WorldCat, which uses the same subject headings as IUCAT, but includes records of books not in the IU system.
The United States is required to report periodically on its compliance with multilateral human rights treaties to which it is a party, and the State Department makes those reports available at its U.S. Treaty Reports web site. The State Department is also required by federal statute to issue human rights reports on countries that receive foreign aid or are members of the United Nations. These reports are available from 1999 onwad at the Department's Human Rights Reports web site.
If you seek an introduction to the doctrinal framework of a topic in human rights law, consider using the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (EPIL) or the Encyclopedia of Human Rights. Each of these sources is prepared by named contributors who are experts in the field of human rights. Each will provide an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of your subject, as well as a bibliography of further sources. Both are authoritative and may be cited in your written work.
The EPIL is part of the Oxford Law Citator, an online platform that links online Oxford titles as well as many open-source documents to one another. As a result, articles in EPIL link to many additional documents on the web, such as international court decisions, that may be relevant to your research.
To use the EPIL, select a subject from the drop-down box of subjects in the Advanced Search template, and combine your subject search with title keywords. For example, to find an article on the right to food, select "human rights" as your subject, and search for the title keyword "food."
The Restatement 3rd of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (KF395.A2 F676 1987) is an authoritative summary of public international law doctrine as developed in the United States. §§701-703 deal with human rights law. For more information, see the description of the Restatement issued by the American Law Institute. The Restatement is available electronically in Lexis , Westlaw, and HeinOnline.
Foreign Policy Bulletin is a quarterly publication that tracks current developments within the Department of State. It has been available in print since 1990, and is available electronically since 2005 in text-searchable format. This title supersedes the officially published U.S. Department of State Dispatch, 1990-1999, which is available at HeinOnline and through the Department of State website (1993-1999). U.S. Department of State Dispatch was preceded by the Department of State Bulletin, which is also available through HeinOnline.
