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Pritzker Legal Research Center


Georgia: Center for International Human Rights

Legal System

Georgia has a civil law system, with important sources of law including the constitution and codes. All laws are published in Sakanonmdeblo matsne, which is the official gazette. Updated legislation and codes are not usually available in English. 

Research Process

Use the following strategy to efficiently find legal materials from Georgia:
  1. Identify the country’s legal system to understand the relevant national sources of law for the country.
  2. Using a research guide to assist you, identify relevant resources where you can access foreign legal materials.
  3. Retrieve or search for the foreign legal materials using the suggested resources.

Because most legal materials will not be available in English, you will likely need to rely on secondary sources to assist with identifying relevant citations to laws or cases. These secondary sources summarize and explain the law. 

Note that Westlaw and Lexis do not provide access to laws and cases from Georgia. 
 

Research Guides

These research guides are useful starting points for understanding Georgia's legal system and well as the sources of law in Georgia. These guides include links to recommended online resources that provide access to legal materials from this country. 

Constitution

The Constitution of Georgia (1995) was most recently amended in 2020. For an overview of the amendments made to the Constitution to change the election system and electoral process, please see this Library of Congress article

The UN Women Global Gender Equality Constitutional Database provides access to gender equality related provisions in constitutions from around the world. 

Laws and Cases

Resources available for finding legal materials from Georgia consist of government websites and subject law collections hosted by NGOs or other entities. If you conduct a Google search to retrieve any legal materials cited in secondary sources, make sure to evaluate the website's authoritativeness and reputability. 

Subject Law Collections

Subject-specific collections of laws, which collect laws from various countries pertaining to a particular subject, are useful resources to incorporate into your research process. These resources often have better search capabilities than foreign government websites and can generally be navigated in English, even though the full-text laws will mostly be in the official language for the country. 

For additional suggestions for subject law collections beyond the selected databases listed below, see the GlobaLex Foreign Law - Subject Law Collections on the Web research guide