10 Finding and Using Enacted Law (Statutes and Ordinances)
10 Finding and Using Enacted Law (Statutes and Ordinances)
Learning Goals:
After reading this chapter, you will be able to
- Use several methods to find statutes (federal and state) and municipal ordinances relevant to your issue(s).
- Navigate the sections of a statute or ordinance.
- Use statutes to find other relevant sources.
What are Statutes?
Statutes are codified laws. When a statute is codified, it is placed into a code that is organized by topic. For example, 42 U.S.C. §1983 is a federal statute allowing a civil action for deprivation of rights. That means the statute is section 1983 of Title 42. All the statutes in Title 42 address public health and welfare.
You will often start your search for primary legal sources with statutes because they address so many legal issues. Any case law on that legal issue will interpret or apply the relevant statute, so it makes sense to start with the statutory sections. Also, you can use the statute to find other legal sources such as case law and administrative rules.
Methods of Finding Statutes
You can use several methods to find both state and federal statutes:
- Use a citation to a statute from a secondary source.
- Use an index to a state or federal code.
- Use a table of contents for a state or federal code.
- Use a popular name table, if available.
Most researchers use online sources, so the following discussion focuses on various online platforms. However, you can still find print statutory codes in some state, county, and academic law libraries. Print codes have index volumes that are located on the shelf at the end of the volume series.
State Statutes
Most states publish their codes on a government website. For example, in Oregon, you can find the Oregon Revised Statutes on the Oregon Legislature’s website. From the home page of that website, you choose the Bills and Laws tab, then select the latest version of the Oregon Revised Statutes.
Once you have located the statutory code, if you have a citation from a colleague or from a secondary source, you can use that citation to find the relevant section. If you do not have a citation, you can
- browse an index, if available;
- look at the table of contents;
- or search using key terms.
Use the Index
Not all freely available government websites publish an index to their statutory code, but many do. For example, the Oregon Revised Statutes on the Oregon Legislature’s website provides an index.pdf to the statutes. To use the index, think about the search terms you generated at the beginning of your research process and navigate through the index to check for those terms. The index often will refer you to another similar word or issue. The index term will refer you to a statute section or sections.
Use the Table of Contents
A table of contents is a list of titles, sections, or parts of the code. It usually appears at the beginning of the code. Browsing a table of contents may lead you to a part of the statutory code that is relevant to your legal is