Subject Guide - Law Statutes

For a general overview of legal resources available, see Law (General). See also the guide for Law (Cases).

Federal Laws           
 

Bills

Proposed legislation is introduced in Congress in the form of a bill. It is easiest to find the text of a bill if you have a bill number. There are several databases that will provide the text of bills both in the current Congress as well as previous sessions.

 

  • LexisNexis Academic. A full text database including legal news, state and federal legislation, and state and federal court cases.  Off campus
  • GPO Access is a federally funded database which provides free, public access to the full-text of bills introduced since the 103rd Congress.   It is searchable by subject or by bill number.
  • THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet - Bill text 1989-present; bill summary and status 1973-present (a public service provided by the Library of Congress)
  • Education Full Text.  Author, title and subject index to over 400 educational periodicals, yearbooks and book series since 1983. Includes references to School Law.

Law

Laws passed by Congress are assigned a Public Law (P.L.) number which currently consists of the Congress and numerical designation. Thus, P.L. 108-101 refers to the101st law passed by the 108th Congress.

Each year the laws are compiled and published as:
United States Statutes at Large (KF 50 .U52)

 

A subject, or codified, approach to these laws is published every six years as the United States Code (U.S.C.) and is supplemented annually. The most current edition of this set is shelved in the General Collection (Floor 4A) under KF 62 [year] .A2.

Public laws are available online through a variety of sources:

 

State Laws            

State laws follow a similar pattern to the federal.

There are numerous sites on the internet for state and local law. LexisNexis Academic is the most comprehensive source available through Maag Library for locating state law.

Baldwin's Ohio Legislative Service, (Ref. KFO 15 .B34) is a current print resource for finding bill numbers, status of a bill, or recent legislation.

Additionally, you may obtain a copy of a bill from your state representative or state senator, or from the Ohio General Assembly web site.

Laws passed by the General Assembly are codified each year into the Ohio Revised Code. Our library has one print version of the Code:

  • Baldwin's Ohio Revised Code Annotated  (Ref. KFO 30 1994.A22)

The Ohio Revised Code is available online through the public-access site: Ohio Revised Code

Additional Resources for Ohio law