The library collects literature on public international law and foreign public law from all over the world and in all languages. The library has the status of a United Nations Depository Library since 1949 and is also a European Documentation Centre of the European Union.

With a multi-lingual collection gathered from throughout the world, the library is a “Central Legal Library”, and possesses a comprehensive collection covering international commercial law, international private law and foreign civil law.

The Max Planck Institute is among the founders of the Munich Max Planck Campus for Legal and Economic Research

The Max Planck Institutes are founders of Munich Max Planck Campus for Legal and Economic Research

The SpringerLink platform provides MPG staff with access to a huge collection of English and German eBooks from 2005 onwards, as well as the English and the German collection of the Springer Book Archive (1842-2004). In addition, the content of selected book series is available. Includes major reference works and dictionaries. Max Planck researchers who publish a monograph or edited volume with Springer Nature as an Open Access eBook receive a discount on the standard Book Publishing Charge. MPDL covers the costs remaining on a pro rata basis. Further details are available on the MPDL website.

Databases of terminology and dictionaries can be searched parallely under an unique surface. Big dictionaries (Pons), pocket dictionary (Langenscheidt), dictionaries of law (Becher, Dietl/Lorenz, Doucet/Feck, Potonnier) -- Wörterbücher und Terminologie-Datenbanken können parallel unter einer einheitlichen Oberfläche durchsucht werden. Großwörterbücher (Pons), Taschenwörterbuch (Langenscheidt), Rechtswörterbücher (Becher, Dietl/Lorenz, Doucet/Feck, Potonnier)