Approximately 60% of the collection consists of international, comparative, and foreign law materials -- one of the most outstanding international collections in the the United States.
The paper and microform collections of the Diamond Law Library at the Columbia Law School consists of slightly over 1,075,000 volumes consisting of roughly 350,000 titles.
Before assessing the portions of the collection that are international and foreign, it is important to note that the library record keeping process centers around titles. A title can be either a single volume monograph or a multivolume run of a serial such as the Bulletin des arrêts de la Cour de cassation: Chambres Civiles, which has been reporting the cases from the French high court since 1792. Within the international law collection, the UN Treaty Series, a single title, now has almost 2,200 volumes. While extrapolations from title figures into volume count may be roughly correct, publishing styles differ from county to country. Our French and German collections are equally deep, but the Germans publish many items in monographic format that French or American scholars would produce as journal articles, so the title counts diverge.
In addition, the grouping of materials into particular collections has changed over the years. This has the effect of making the Common Law collections seem smaller than they really are. Most British, Irish, Scottish, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander treatises from before 1979 are inextricably mixed in with the US books from the same period. Also the counts don't include many titles from our rare books operation, a large portion of which is older English materials. So the count for France includes anything since the 1790's, but British materials from that period have been left out.
Given these caveats, close estimates of modern, non-domestic law sections of the library include:
International law titles - 74,300 (21% of the collection)
Comparative law titles - 12,000 (3.4%)
Common Law foreign jurisdiction titles - 13,500
Non-Common Law foreign jurisdiction titles - 111,500
Foreign TOTAL: 125,000 (36% of the collection)
Title samples of major foreign Common Law collections include:
British Isles 4,500
India 3,400
Australia 1,500
Canada 2,100
Title samples of the Civil Law foreign jurisdictions include:
Germany 22,000
France 8,600
Japan 7,700
Trying to measure the Law School's access to electronic international and foreign materials is difficult process. CLS does subscribe to a number of resources from different countries, such as China, South Africa, Canada, and Argentina. But Lexis and Westlaw also provide access to a number of jurisdictions beyond the United States, such as the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Germany. These have not proven stable over the years as Lexis and Westlaw develop conflicts with their suppliers. The Law School also subscribes to databases covering international law, such as Lawtel for the European Union and the Optical Disk System of the United Nations. CLS is committed to expanding these and have worked with faculty members to meet their needs, but these resources are not as susceptible to accurate counting as are books.
Approximately 60% of the collection consists of international, comparative, and foreign law materials -- one of the most outstanding international collections in the the United States.