State Legislative Information

SearchWorks

Start by reviewing a state research guide to learn more about the legislative process in your state of interest and the publication process for legislative documents. 

The Carolina Academic Press Legal Research Series also contain state-specific research guidance, including for legislative history research. Using SearchWorks, Stanford's library catalog, you can search the "series" field for "Carolina Academic Press legal research series."  This will identify the available legal research guides, which are all located on the second floor of the library (Eyles aisle inside of the reading room).  

Additionally, you can conduct an advanced search in SearchWorks to identify other state-specific legal research materials.  First, click on "Advanced search":

For example, you could conduct a search in "Title" for "California" and in "Subject" for "legal research."   Then you can sort by year (new to old):

Review the table of contents as well as indices for books you locate to identify sections relevant to legislative history research.

LibGuides (Online Research Guides)

There are a number of helpful online state legislative history research guides available.  For example, Indiana University Bloomington's State Legislative History Research Guides Inventory identifies research guides by state.

Generally, to locate online research guides for a particular state, you can conduct a Google search for:  California legislative history research guide.  It is a good idea to compare a few research guides on a particular topic because quality varies.  

Finally, you may find it helpful to check local academic law libraries' websites in a particular state; there may be a valuable state research guide created by the law librarians at that institution.

You can review state bibliographies, which identify major print and electronic sources of state legislative histories. 

One source of state bibliographies is HeinOnline, which is available to all Stanford University users.  HeinOnline offers AALL GD-SIS State Bibliographies, which are produced by members of the American Association of Law Libraries in conjunction with William S. Hein & Co.  To navigate to this resource from the HeinOnline homepage, look under "Browse Databases by Name" for "Spinelli's Law Library Reference Shelf."  Click on "Spinelli's Law Library Reference Shelf" and click on "AALL GD-SIS State Bibliographies."  Then click on your state of interest to identify the available bibliographies.

Additionally, you may consider reviewing the State Legislative Sourcebook, located in the Jonsson Social Sciences Reading Room at Green Library.

Additional sources of state bibliographies are identified below.

Coverage varies by state.

Visit Lexis Legislative Histories, then select the specific state you are interested in researching.

Generally, Lexis provides access to Voting Records on legislation and a Legislative Bill History, which includes various documents related to bills. Lexis suggests starting with a free-text search in the Legislative Bill History database to account for differences in the names of legislative documents and committees across states. Searches can also be refined within a specific Practice Area, with options to filter by Jurisdiction and/or Sources, allowing users to locate documents from multiple states on a particular topic.

Lexis provides varying state coverage for full-text bills, advance legislative services, and legislative bill histories within the Statutes and Legislation section. Additionally, it includes an Archived Code Search feature for historical research.

Coverage varies by state.

Westlaw Legislative Histories includes bill analyses, governor messages, and legislative journals. Users can search across various types of legislative history documents, including amendment text, fiscal notes, committee reports, governor messages, legislative journals, transcripts, veto messages, and voting records. Results can be filtered by state for more precise research. 

In Westlaw, you can also search annotated state historical statutes, bill tracking (current and historical), and proposed or enacted legislation.