This guide is designed to assist students in conducting state legislative history research. It includes general sections on finding state codes and legislative histories, along with detailed guidance for researching legislative histories specifically in California, Illinois, and New York.
For information on identifying pre-compiled 50-state surveys, please check out the Locating 50-State Surveys research guide.
For guidance on federal legislative histories, please refer to our Researching Federal Legislative History guide.
While this guide provides helpful starting points for researching state legislative histories, it is important to remember that the research process can differ significantly from one state to another. Numerous research guides offer state-specific information. If you're interested in these resources, we recommend exploring the State Legislative History Research Guides Inventory from the Jerome Hall Law Library at the Maurer School of Law.
State law codes may be available through a variety of sources, as identified below:
You can check state legislative body websites for codes. Congress.gov has a directory of state legislative websites: https://www.congress.gov/state-legislature-websites.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (https://www.ncsl.org/) may also be a good resource for state specific research and bipartisan policy research.
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