The New York Times today has an excellent article about the effects of foreclosure laws in Spain.  In Spain, foreclosure and eviction do not terminate the debt, so after losing their homes, many people owe the remainder of the mortgage.  According to the article, people cannot escape the debt through bankruptcy either, because mortgage debt is specifically excluded from the bankruptcy laws. 

You can find the laws in the official gazette of Spain, the Boletín Oficial del Estado.  We also have access to a database called vLex, where you can research legislation and caselaw as well as secondary sources.  The Foreign Law Guide's chapter on Spain (also a subscription database) is an excellent introduction to the Spanish legal system.  More Spanish resources can be found using the Country-by-Country guide.

If you are looking for the laws in English you can consult the book Butterworths International Insolvency Laws.   The book will also allow you to compare laws in Spain to laws in several other European countries.  Other books and secondary sources on this subject can be found here, in Morris.

                                                                                                                                                         ----- Ryan Harrington

A gazette is an official government pulication that conveys government business, news, and laws as they are passed to the public.  Most countries have a gazette and many are available free online.  The regularity of publication of gazettes varies by country as do their official names, naturally, as they are published in the vernacular.  For example, the gazette of Peru is called El Peruano; it is in Spanish, publshed daily, and available online.

The gazette of South Korea is the Gwanbo; it is in Korean and also published online.

You can find a complete list of gazettes on our Country-by-Country Guide to Foreign Legal Research.  This portal also has research guides for each country to help you get started researching the law of foreign nations.

We are pleased to report that our print Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire (Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiˇiskoˇi Imperii), 1649, has been in significant use by our patrons.

PSZRI is the complete collection of legislation of the Russian Empire and is considered one of the most monumental collections in Russian imperial law. The collection is arranged in chronological order and should not be confused with Polnyĭ  svod zakonov Rossiĭskoĭ imperii, a 16-volume set of laws published in 1911, in which many of the laws were systematically consolidated into topical codes rather than in chronological order.

PSZRI was begun through the efforts of Emperor Nikolas I and in 1826 entrusted to the second branch of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellery. The set was published under the guidance of M. M. Speranskii, from 1839-1873.

As part of the project designed to establish the National Digital Library in Russia, NLR enriched its library by digitizing the Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire. Currently, all readers have open-access to the complete texts of the first, second and third collections.  Comments and suggestions on the use of this resource can be sent to the NLR webmaster.

This is part of one of the digitized volumes (pdf) of the Complete Law which contains beautiful illustrations of Russian crests.

                                                                                                                      ----- Basia Olszowa

On post-Lisbon EU:

A guide to European Union law : as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon / by P.S.R.F. Mathijsen. London : Sweet & Maxwell, 2010.
KJE947 .M38 2010

The regimes of European integration : constructing governance of the single market / Shawn Donnelly. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2010.
JZ1570 .D67 2010

On international environmental law:

International judicial control of environmental protection : standard setting, compliance control, and the development of international environmental law by the international judiciary / Yasuhiro Shigeta. Alphen aan den Rijn : Kluwer Law International ; Frederick, MD : Aspen Publishers [distributor for North, Central, and South America], c2010.
K3585 .S53 2010

On international arbitration:

Handbook on international commercial arbitration / Peter Ashford. Huntington, N.Y. : JurisNet, LLC, c2009.
K2400 .A984 2009

On conflict of laws:

Intellectual property in the global arena : jurisdiction, applicable law, and the recognition of judgments in Europe, Japan and the US / edited by Jürgen Basedow, Toshiyuki Kono and Axel Metzger.
Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, c2010.
K7550 .I583 2010

The private international law of non-contractual obligations according to the Rome-II regulation : a comparative study of the choice of law rules in tort under European, English and German law / Claus Wilhelm Fröhlich. Hamburg, Germany : Kovac, 2008.
KJC979.T67 F76 2008

On discrimination in employment:

Pregnant pause : an international legal analysis of maternity discrimination / Anne-Marie Mooney Cotter. Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2010.
K1770 .C684X 2010

We have free trials right now for:

• Brill International Law & Human Rights / eBooks bundle – through November 19 - IP Access 
  
  
• Trade Law Guide – through October - IP Access 
  
  
• BNA Tax Treaties – through October - IP Access 
  
  
• IBFD - International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (foreign and International tax – through October -  password access (contact Teresa for a password)) 

It is very important for us to hear whether you believe we should license any of these databases.  So please use these databases and provide feedback to Teresa. Thank you!

October 5^th marks Raoul Wallenberg Day. This is the day he was awarded United States citizenship in 1981, posthumously. (The second person to receive this honor after Winston Churchill). Part of 15th Street, SW in Washington, D.C., the section where the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is located, is named Raoul Wallenberg Place.

Raoul Wallenberg (1912-1947) was a Swedish diplomat who worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust; he saved tens of thousands of them. The Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law located in Lund, Sweden, is an independent academic institution named in his honor. The mission of the institute is “to promote universal respect for human rights and humanitarian law by means of research, academic education, dissemination and institutional development.”

One of the important human rights resources in the Yale Law Library is the Raoul Wallenberg Institute Human Rights Library. A recent example from this monographic series is International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms: Essays in Honour of Jakob Th. Moller.   In conjunction with Martinus Nijhoff, the Institute publishes four serials: the Baltic Yearbook of International Law, the Chinese Yearbook of Human Rights, the Nordic Journal of International Law,  and the International Journal of Minority and Group Rights.

                                                                                                                                     ----- Daniel Wade

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has filed the first sexual orientation-based discrimination case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.  The IACHR published the following press release:

IACHR TAKES CASE INVOLVING CHILE TO THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT

Washington, D.C., September 20, 2010 – The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) filed an application with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a case involving Chile.

On September 17, 2010, the IACHR filed an application in the Karen Atala and daughters, which concerns the discriminatory treatment and arbitrary interference in the private and family life Karen Atala experienced due to her sexual orientation. In the Merits Report 139/09, the Commission concluded that the State of Chile was responsible for the discrimination against Karen Atala in the course of judicial process that resulted in the decision to deny her the care and custody of her daughters. The case also concerns the failure to observe the best interest of her daughters, whose custody and care the Commission considered were determined in violation to their rights. The case was referred to the Inter-American Court because the IACHR concluded the State did not comply with the recommendations contained in its Merits Report.

This is the first case that the Inter-American Commission decides on discrimination based on sexual orientation. This case will allow the Inter-American Court to decide for the first time on the incompatibility of this type of discrimination with the American Convention.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or reside.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, created in 1959, is primarily charged with the taskf promoting the observance and defense of human rights in the Americas.  The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was created in 1979.  It is an autonomous judicial institution of the OAS whose task is to interpret and enforce the American Convention on Human Rights. Decisions from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can be found here on the website of the Court and can also be found, along with select decisions from the IACHR, in the Oxford Reports on International Law - Human Rights module.

The Inter-American human rights system helps explain the differences between the commission and the court.  We also have manuals on practice and procedure before the Court.  In addition, we have a wealth of information about the Court and Commission in Spanish.   Simply search the catalog for Inter-American Commission on Human Rights  or Inter-American Court of Human Rights  as subject headings.

                                                                                                                                    ---- Ryan Harrington