Researching State Statutes

• What Are Statutes and How Are They Codified?
  • Statutes are laws passed by legislatures at both the state and federal level. Each individual law is called a statute. Statutes are then codified, or added to the state code by topic. Having them arranged by topic makes them easier to use and research. Not all statutes are codified. Only statutes of a general and permanent nature are added to the code. So for instance, a statute that requires the state to produce a report on crime is not permanent and would not be codified.
• What Are Annotated and Unannotated Codes?
  • State codes are usually published by commercial publishers who add annotations, in the form of explanatory notes, summaries of cases interpreting the statutes, and notes on the history of each code section. The codes you can find on Lexis and Westlaw are annotated codes. The codes available on free state websites are usually unannotated. 

You can keyword search statutes just like case law but there are some other search methods that can come in handy.

• Use the table of contents
  • Related statutes are often codified near each other. You can use the table of contents to browse other related statutes. Here's an example of the table of contents of a statute on Westlaw but you can do the same thing on Lexis or any other version of a state's code.

If you look at the table of contents for this section of the state code you can see that the other nearby sections are on the same topic, dissolution of corporations.