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State Legislative Information

Introduction

State law codes may be available through a variety of sources, as identified below:

  • Westlaw
  • Lexis+
  • Bloomberg Law
  • State Legislative Body Websites
  • HeinOnline State Statutes: A Historical Archive

Westlaw

Westlaw, available to Stanford Law School users by personal name and password, has state codes.

From the homepage, under "Browse," select "State Materials."  

Select your state of interest.  For example, you can select California:

Under "Statutes & Court Rules," select "California Statutes & Court Rules."  

On the right hand side, you will see "TOOLS & RESOURCES":

You can utilize the "California Statutes Find Template" if you have a citation.  You can select "California Statutes Popular Name Table" if you are familiar with the popular name of the statute.  You can utilize "California Statutes Index" to locate statutes on a particular subject.  Select "California Statutes Annotated - Historical" to review archived statutes with annotations.  

Lexis+

Lexis Advance, available to Stanford Law School users by personal name and password, has state codes.

From the homepage, select "Statutes & Legislation" under "Explore Content" and "Content Type":

Next, you can click on "Codes" under "Content Type":

Then you can click on your state of interest to run a search:

Bloomberg Law

From the homepage, click on "Browse All Content."  

Then, select "Laws & Regulations":

Next, select "State Laws & Regulations":

Click on your state of interest.  For example, California:

Then click on "Cal. Legislative":

Next, click on "California Code" to access the code:

State Legislative Body Websites

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.

HeinOnline State Statutes: A Historical Archive

HeinOnline's State Statutes: A Historical Archive is available to all Stanford University users and contains superseded state statutes for all fifty states. Search the statutes by state, date, description and text. Coverage goes back until 1717. 

To access the session laws, first click on "U.S. State" under "Browse Databases by Category":

Next, click on "Session Laws Library":

Then, click on "State Session Laws":

Then you can utilize the Session Laws Quick Locator or click on a state and browse: