The mission of the Law Library of Congress is to provide authoritative legal research, reference and instruction services, and access to an unrivaled collection of U.S., foreign, comparative, and international law.

The Law Library of Congress was officially established in 1832 to provide the United States Congress and Supreme Court with access to current and accurate legal research materials. Over time, our mission was expanded to include other branches of the U.S. Government, the public and the global legal community.

The Law Library serves as the nation’s custodian of legal and legislative collections from all countries and legal systems of the world housed in the Library of Congress. As custodian, the Law Library maintains, retrieves, preserves, and secures the print and microform collections.

The Law Library of Congress contains the largest collection of United States, foreign, comparative, and international law and legislation in the world. The law collection currently consists of more than one million titles comprising over 2.9 million volumes, and over 3 million microform items, which can be located by searching the online catalog.

The Law Library of Congress produces reports on foreign, comparative, and international law in response to requests from Members of Congress, Congressional staff and committees, the federal courts, executive branch agencies, and others.

The Law Library of Congress contains the world’s largest collection of law books and legal resources, with strong foreign law and comprehensive United States law collections.

The primary mission of the Law Library of Congress is to develop legal expertise and the world’s largest, unrivaled global legal collection to support authoritative research on foreign, comparative, and international law.

The mission of the Law Library of Congress is to provide authoritative legal research, reference and instruction services, and access to an unrivaled collection of U.S., foreign, comparative, and international law.

Established by Congress in 1832, the Law Library has a collection of over 2.65 million volumes spanning the ages and covering virtually every jurisdiction in the world. Law Library Research Guides View guides created for topics ranging from law basics to the Supreme Court.

The Library of Congress provides access to a broad range of databases and electronic resources (eResources). We have prepared this guide for users conducting legal and legislative research, to help direct them to eResources related to their research topic.