The Law Offices of James B. Gottstein and Touch N'Go Systems, Inc. offers this useful site of Alaska primary materials. Find appellate court opinions and links to other relevant case law, Alaska statutes and administrative code, court rules and constitution. The site also offers links to other useful Alaska legal resources. 25 May 2000. This Web site replaces the paper-based publication, Alaska Administrative Journal (See press release.). All Alaska state agencies will publish public notices here.
The site enables searching the former journal (from 1986) and current notices.
Revised 10 September 2004. Find a directory of legal resources arranged by jurisdiction and topic. Some areas of the site provide a search interface to select external sources. Unfortunately, the directory has not been kept up to date. Many of the links are broken and some of the search interfaces neglect to include current sources. For example, the federal search section does not include legislation from the current Congress, regulations from the current Federal Register, or current U.S. Supreme Court opinions. 25 May 2000. Revised 6 February 2004. American Legal Publishing provides access to its city and town codes of ordinances. Covering more than 25 states, the publisher informs visitors of the date of the last ordinance included for each municipal code. Visitors can choose between framed and unframed versions. They can also browse or search the individual codes. 23 February 2005. Jupiter Publishing Company, LLP, offers this database of annotations to the Illinois Administrative Code. Covering 1984 to present, entries consist of "headnotes covering each provision of a section of the Illinois Administrative Code that is cited in a case." You may search by Code citation or keywords. There is a charge to access the database, but the vendor offers a free trial period. Jesse Frey, a paralegal, offers a comprehensive guide to Arizona state legal resources via The Arizona Lawyer's Guide to the Internet. A lot of work has gone into this project. It's obvious Mr. Frey carefully selects the references he provides. Arizona lawyers, you're in luck! The Blue Sheet by Blue Sheet Publications, Inc., Texas, offers a database of jury verdicts, settlements, mediations and arbitrations for jurisdictions in Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. To test it, login in as "demo," and provide "demo" as the password and client. 28 August 2000. Findlaw, in partnership with AccessLaw, provides free access to California court opinions from 1934 to present. Search by keyword, citation, party name, or docket number. Or, browse recent decisions by date; or browse individual volumes of the official reporters.
While case law via this service contains helpful jump citations to the official reporter, it should not be considered an official source of California case law.
29 August 2000. Law.com's CalLaw site (fee-based) adds The California Supreme Court Monitor. It offers 1) case summaries of reviews granted by subject or by date, 2) court decisions by subject or by date, and 3) a depublication list.
The press release states: "Law.com visitors can also track all new developments in the review process." I did not find an automated means for doing this. Perhaps a regular subscriber will enlighten me.
Researchers should note: "It is a violation of the terms of your service agreement with Cal Law to copy and redistribute this page [the court's opinion] either by print of electronic means without the express written permission of Cal Law."
28 September 2007. The Governors Highway Safety Association provides a chart of state cell phone driving laws. The chart indicates whether 1) the state collects crash data related to cell phone use, 2) there are restrictions on cell phone use for novice drivers, 3) there are other restrictions, and 4) there are preemption laws, or laws than ban municipalities from implementing restrictions. While the chart is a good place to start research on this topic, it does not provide the legal citation for referenced laws. 4 December 2002. The Center for New York City Law at New York Law School provides free search access to the administrative decisions of four city agencies. Now covering the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), the Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB), the Conflicts of Interest Board (CIB), and the Loft Board, the Center has plans to add the decisions of three more agencies in coming months. The site publishes OATH decisions from 1990 to present, with select coverage of earlier decisions. It posts OCB decisions from 1968, all CIB decisions, and Loft Board decisions from 1996 to present.
The site also provides subscription access to CityLaw, a bi-monthly publication reporting on key legislative, administrative and judicial decisions affecting the City of New York, and CityRegs, a bi-weekly fax news service that summarizes current proposed or adopted New York City rules and regulations. Visitors may read select CityLaw articles and select past issues of CityRegs for free. 20 February 2002. Revised 15 April 2005. This nonprofit organization conducts investigative research and reports on public policy issues in the United States and around the world. It offers a number of useful resources, including a guide to filing Freedom of Information requests (see Tools of the Trade, U.S. Public Records Law), a database of political committees registered under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, a database of information about prosecutor misconduct (Harmful Error), a database of outside interests reported by state legislators (State Lawmaker Assets), and more. You will also find news and commentary on a variety of issues. The Center publishes a newsletter and an RSS feed. Revised 13 September 2002. Cornell Legal Information Institute offers this gateway to federal and state constitutions, laws, and regulations. Several of these materials are available via Cornell LII servers. While the site typically improves on the use of the materials by adding search and browsing features, researchers should take care to verify and update information they find. More current sources of the United States Code (USC) and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) exist. 11 April 2005. According to The Criminal Records Manual (Facts on Demand Press, 2004), criminal histories are not public in this state. If you have a signed release, you may request a criminal history through the Criminal History Section of the Delaware State Police. On the other hand, if the conviction resulted in an opinion or order, this site might help you.
It provides keyword search access to opinions and orders from Delaware state courts back to 2000. Matching documents are available in full-text PDF and free of charge.
15 May 2000. General Code Publishers offers numerous municipal codes in folio infobases. Most are from cities and counties in the northeastern United States. 6 August 2007. The legislative research librarians at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) track state legislative activity pertaining to Internet legal issues. Specific topical coverage includes spyware, disclosure of security breaches of consumer personal information, monitoring of employee e-mail and Internet access, and privacy policies on Web sites. You will also find links to policy statements and other documents (reports, position papers) from authoritative sources. 5 February 2004. The National Conference of State Legislatures offers a free database for finding legislation and current law on environmental health issues from all 50 states. Coverage extends back to 2000 and topics include indoor air quality, pesticides, lead, asbestos and others. You can search by keyword or other criteria. The information provided includes the state, bill number, sponsor, status, date of last action and description. 6 August 2007. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCLS) compiles legislative developments in the 50 states concerning financial privacy generally. It also compiles legislative activity on credit card numbers, social security numbers and consumer security breach notification.
General coverage goes back to the year 2000, while coverage of legislation related to SSN privacy goes back to 2004. Legislative activity on credit card numbers covers this information on receipts (1999-2005) and skimming devices (2001-2006). Legislation on disclosing breaches goes back to 2002. 30 August 2002. Revised 3 February 2006. A long-time, consistently up-to-date favorite amongst legal researchers is this guide to sources providing full-text state laws and legislation. It covers statutes, constitutions, session laws, legislation and administrative regulations. Since the guide includes some non-authoritative sources, legal professionals should verify information with another source. 12 November 2002. Bonnie Shucha, reference and electronic services librarian at U.W. Law Library, authors this Wisconsin Lawyer article about state legal resources. It consists of a handy chart arranged by type of law. 6 August 2007. The legislative research librarians at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) track legislation in the 50 states pertaining to health privacy issues. Find state-by-state abstracts on several issues associated with genetics (embryonic and fetal research, genetic privacy, health insurance, human cloning, etc.), a 50-state chart on statutes pertaining to genetics, a summary of state laws related to newborn screening privacy, and more. 5 February 2004. The National Conference of State Legislatures offers a free database for finding legislation and current law on health issues from all 50 states. Currently, the database covers legislation introduced, and law enacted, during 2003. Topics include chronic disease, cigarette excise tax, food tax, health disparities, nutrition, obesity, physical education, tobacco, workplace wellness and more. You can search by keyword or other criteria. The information provided includes the state, bill number, sponsor, status and description. 12 May 2005. Revised 6 August 2007. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) maintains this Web site devoted to state and federal legal information about policies and strategies for combating identity theft. Find a chart of abstracted state laws that deal with identity theft as well as separate charts of abstracted pending and enacted state legislation from 2002 to 2005. In addition, there are charts of state legislation on issues such as the use of credit card numbers on receipts and consumer report security freezes. Researchers will also find related off-site resources as well as related NCSL publications. 14 September 2001. Revised 9 August 2002. The Administrative Codes and Registers (ACR) Section of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) offers this handy chart of sources of state administrative rules. Find the primary source (often called register or bulletin) and secondary source (code) of state regulations. 9 August 2001. Revised 30 September 2005. Designed primarily for those who seek Minnesota or Wisconsin legal information, LawMoose, by Pritchard Law Webs, serves as a portal to state, local and federal law. Find statutes, legislation, court opinions, legal research primers, attorney disciplinary records and more. The public portal is free. Paying subscribers receive access to the Enhanced Edition of LawMoose, which is designed specifically for Minnesota lawyers. Revised 3 November 2000. This fee-based resource offers current court opinions, ethics opinions, briefs, court rules, legislation, and other legal documents from Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia. 21 August 2006. This opinion by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals invalidates the section of Delaware freedom of information law that requires state residency. Codified at 29 Del. Code Ann. § 10003, the law restricted non-residents' rights to access, inspect and copy public documents. 28 August 2000. Revised 8 November 2000. lexisONE offers free case law, legal forms, and a legal sites guide. Find selected federal and state cases covering the past five years as well as a complete collection of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. Researchers may retrieve relevant decisions by citation or by keyword queries.
On 8 November 2000, Lexis rolls out phase two of LexisONE adding numerous free legal documents and forms, an expanded Internet Legal Guide, Matthew Bender forms (for a fee), and free access, by special arrangement and for a limited time, to the Martindale-Hubbell Law Digest. The enhanced site also includes articles on law technology, client development and practice management topics, legal news, information on lifestyle issues, and lexisONE Wireless for access to Lexis products and services via handheld devices.
31 August 2007. Founded by Scott Yates, LgDB, pronounced Ledge-D-B, is a database of information about legislation in the 50 states. It provides simple and advanced search features. To find the advanced search options, you first have to conduct a simple search. (Use the search box on the home page.) Once the results appear, you'll find a link for advanced search.
Advanced search produces a pop-up form, which means you'll have to allow javascript to run at the site. With advanced search, you can limit queries to a particular sponsor, state or bills in the current session.
Results provide information about the bill (title, sponsors, actions, amendments, versions, links to the official source, as well as the text of the legislation. Additional features lets you write and save your own summary or comment on the bill.
Once you display a bill, you may select an additional search option that lets you find similar legislation in the same state. Every previously mentioned feature is available for free, if you register with the site. There are additional features for paid subscribers.
Cautions: Site documentation is vague about sources and coverage. It's unclear whether the database is complete; that is, does it currently provide data from all 50 states? Or is this the goal? Finally, to take advantage of the advanced search features, you have to conduct a simple search first and you have to allow javascript. 7 January 2003. Michigan civil litigation lawyers comment on law and technology issues. The site separates issues into two broad categories: legal technology and politics. It covers news stories, court decisions, and other sources of related information. Several comments focus on Michigan law. 11 March 2003. Revised 11 June 2003. Not to be confused with an official state court reporter, Louisiana Supreme Court Report is a current information awareness service that provides summaries of Louisiana Supreme Court decisions. Each summary links to the full-text of the decision. The site also offers this service via email and an RSS news feed. The news feed provides the headline and lead sentence. 19 December 2000. Search or browse all 1999 and 2000 mayoral election results nationwide. 19 December 2000. Search by last name, city/state, or population to find brief information about mayors nationwide. Data includes full name, city/state, population, phone, next election date, email address, and city Web site address. The bio also includes a picture of the mayor. MultiState Associates Incorporated offers this no nonsense chart of official state legislative information. Municipal Code Corporation publishes codified ordinances for many local governments. Its web site offers free access to Folio Infobases for more than 100 municipalities in the United States.
Unfortunately, little help exists for formulating queries and displaying search results.
Revised 8 November 2002. Seattle Public Library offers a useful finding aid for locating municipal codes. It provides individual links to codes that are not published by one of the five major publishers listed at the top of the guide. If a code is published by American Legal Publishing (e.g., Philadelphia Code), Book Publishing Company (now LexisNexis Municipal Codes; e.g., Los Angeles County Code), General Code Publishers (e.g., San Francisco Code), Municipal Code Corporation (e.g., Miami Code), or Sterling Codifiers (e.g. Colorado Springs City Code) it provides a link to the publisher's library of codes. 25 May 2000. Revised 26 September 2003. Formerly a collection of online municipals codes published by Book Publishing Company, this site now links to municipal codes published and maintained online by LexisNexis. The codes are available free of charge. The preface, or opening page, of each code indicates how up to date it is. Revised 12 December 2003. A national organization that represents county governments in the United States, the National Association of Counties (NACO) offers resources for NACO members and the public on its Web site. Find topical legislative bulletins and fact sheets, articles, testimony, research reports and more. Special features include the NACO Code of Ethics for County Officials, a subject index to sample county codes and ordinances and county profiles that include the names and email addresses of elected officials. This site offers select new New Jersey state and federal case law for approximately 30 days. Researchers must be able to recognize opinions by file name. There is no search engine or informative index.
The site also offers Daily Decision Alert, a digest of recent case law from New Jersey state and federal courts. It offers an archive of this digest, but again it presents researchers with no search features or informative indexing.
Rutgers Law School at Camden offers this official archive of decisions from the New Jersey Supreme Court (3/94 - present), Superior Court, Appellate Division (9/95 - present), N.J. Tax Court (9/95 - present), and N.J. District Court (October 1998 - present). 5 February 2008. With help from Westlaw, the New York Secretary of State makes available an unofficial compilation of all New York State codes, rules and regulations. Currently, you cannot browse the collection. "This initial release of the online NYCRR does not yet include a table of contents. To find desired text, visitors [click the link for NYCRR, and then] simply enter a search term or NYCRR citation. A table of contents will be available in the near future."
Technical note: Your browser must allow for pop-ups from westlaw.com. Free text searching (the use of exact keywords and Boolean or proximity connectors) is not allowed. You may conduct "natural language searching" only. Rutgers Law School at Camden offers this official archive of decisions from the New Jersey Supreme Court (3/94 - present), Superior Court, Appellate Division (9/95 - present), N.J. Tax Court (9/95 - present), and N.J. District Court (October 1998 - present). 9 January 2003. Philadelphia-based Jenkins Law Library and American Lawyer Media join to provide this fee-based site covering Pennsylvania case law, legal news, verdicts and settlements, court rules, trial listings, and lawsuits filed. The Cases section includes federal, state, and select local court decisions as well as the Digests of Recent Opinions from Pennsylvania Law Weekly (1994 to present) and the unreported opinions of the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Local court coverage includes decisions from District & County Reports, 3rd & 4th Series, as well as from various county reporters. News provides access to The Legal Intelligencer (1995 forward) and Pennsylvania Law Weekly (1994 forward). Court Rules covers state court rules and the local rules of various county courts. Trial Listings provides full-text coverage from The Legal Intelligencer for the current three months. Suits Filed lets you browse or search new lawsuits from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. It also provides archival coverage of lawsuits filed in Bucks and Montgomery counties. Verdicts and settlements contains verdicts, awards and settlements reported in Pennsylvania Law Weekly from late 1993 to the present.
Site features include Boolean (AND, OR, NOT) and phrase searching as well as word truncation, but not the use of proximity connectors (NEAR, WITHIN, SAME SENTENCE, etc). Legal professionals may like the ability to download PDF copies of slip opinions. 16 July 2007. Revised 18 July 2007. This is the official Web site for access to Pennsylvania consolidated laws. You may browse, download and print the laws in ascii text or PDF. You may also search by keyword or legal citation. Search results may be displayed with highlighted terms.
Researchers should note that this collection of Pennsylvania laws is incomplete. As the title indicates, it consists of consolidated statutes only. Not all statutes in the state have been consolidated. Therefore, at this time, we recommend using an up-to-date print edition called Purdon's or an online legal research service such as Lexis or Westlaw. 16 July 2007. This is the official Web site for accessing information pertaining to Pennsylvania state laws. Find general information on the House and Senate as well as access to consolidated statutes. The site also provides easy links to the Pennsylvania Code (codified administrative regulations), the Pennsylvania Bulletin and Pennsylvania session laws. The FEIN Group, and information technology company, in conjunction with American Legal Publishing Corporation, offers the Philadelphia Code and Home Rule Charter as a Folio infobase. The infobase contains the 7th edition, which is current as of August 1998. Courtesy of the Law Offices of D. Pamela Gaines, this site provides the first and only free site (of which I'm aware) that offers searchable Pennsylvania court opinions in html. Researchers will also find an index to legal texts and annotated lists of resources and case law on liability topics and the Year 2000 issue. The site promises to add Pennsylvania briefs in the near future. 14 February 2008. Revised 18 March 2008. Owned and powered by Fastcase, The Public Library of Law (PLoL) makes available all cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate cases from 1950 forward, appellate cases from all 50 states back to 1997, the U.S. Code, select statutes or codes from all 50 states, as well as select state regulations, court rules and constitutions. While the case law appears to come directly from Fastcase, other legal documents originate from external sources, such as the House of Representatives (U.S. Code), state legislatures and other trustworthy legal sources. PLoL simply offers an alternate search interface.
Searching here is more advanced than what you would find at a public Web search engine. For instance, the database supports the within (W/n) proximity connector. It also supports Boolean, exact phrase searching and wildcard (*) searching (right-hand truncation only).
Technical notes: You must activate javascript to use this Web site. You must register to display the full text of case law. 9 February 2005. The Office of the Secretary of State offers a free database containing active, repealed and superseded state agency regulations. You can search by agency (leave the keyword field blank) or keyword to find bibliographic information and a link to the full-text regulation in PDF. You can also qualify a query to include repealed or superseded rules.
If you want to track new regulations, set up a free "rules tracker" account. Access is immediate. "Rules trackers" let you set up e-mail notification about new rules that match your query. RSS enthusiasts should visit the agency's beta RSS feed builder at http://www2.sec.state.ri.us/rss/ .
20 June 2002. John Marshall Law School professor David E. Sorkin offers easy access to U.S. federal and state, as well as European Union and other country, laws regarding mass email. The site covers both enacted laws and proposed legislation. 23 October 2001. The University of Minnesota's Alcohol Epidemiology Program provides a database of state alcohol legislation enacted since 1997. Find summaries of legislation as well as the full-text of enacted versions. I emphasized that this is NOT a state laws database. Content provided comes from StateNet, a well-known provider of state legislative information, and consists of the text of the law as enacted. A current reading of the law would encompass reviewing all enacted versions, including those passed prior to 1997. This is, however, a useful resource for comparing state legislation or initiating a review of a state law's legislative history.
Also available at this site is commentary pertaining to policies that restrict youth access to alcohol, model alcohol control ordinances, an overview of state alcohol policies, an alcohol compliance check procedures manual, and a detailed research guide on finding information pertaining to alcohol law. Use this Piper Resources guide to find state and local sources of government information. 6 October 1999. Formerly a service of The Center for Information Law and Policy, this tool assists researchers looking for the opinions of the various state courts. Villanova now maintains this resource. Search state government sites with FindLaw's LawCrawler interface to official state government Web pages. 6 August 2007. The legislative research librarians at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) track legislative activity in the 50 states on disclosure requirements related to security breaches involving consumer personal or financial information. The tracking begins in 2002. 6 October 1999. Formerly a joint Villanova/Chicago-Kent effort, this resource now resides at Chicago-Kent. Please note the new Web address.
Use the State Web Locator to find Web sites for state agencies. Many of these will link to official state legislative pages.
Revised 15 April 2005. Funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Stateline.org provides news and commentary about a variety of state issues, including crime, business, education, environment, health care, social policy, taxes, technology, transportation and security. The "issues" section consists mostly of brief summaries of current news items with links to the original source. You may browse this section by topic or state. You may also search it.
The "commentary" section contains longer articles written by professional news reporters. At this site, you will also find governors' state of the state addresses from 2000 to present. You may also sign up to receive news alerts by e-mail, or use your aggregator to subscribe to some of its many RSS feeds.
This guide offers legal professionals links to numerous useful research sites. Although it focuses on Texas law, it also compiles many useful general legal references. One of the best Internet sources for government information, the University of Michigan Documents Center offers numerous research guides pertaining to federal, state, and local government information. 11 March 2003. Rory Perry, Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia provides summaries of recently issued opinions. Each summary links to the full-text of the decision. He also provides a RSS/XML news feed and delivery by email. Cyburbia, formerly the Planning and Architecture Internet Resource Center, offers an extensive list of zoning codes on the Web. |
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