Researching Texas Law

In Texas, researchers are often required to consult session laws not only for historical purposes but also for citation purposes.This usually occurs when a researcher wants to cite to an older Texas statute on point. For many years, Texas statutes were organized as articles in the Texas Revised Civil Statutes and published as part of Vernon’s Annotated Revised Civil Statutes of the State of Texas. When these statutes have been placed into subject-matter codes, such as the Education Code, the old articles were repealed when the new codes were enacted. This means that many Texas statutes that have never been “taken off the books” technically have been repealed during this process.

The Greenbook does not allow citations to Vernon’s Annotated Revised Civil Statutes of the State of Texas under Rule 11.1.1(a). The proper citation instead must be to the official session laws, meaning the citation typically should be to the General and Special Laws of the State of Texas. This rule is somewhat inconsistent with Rule 12.2.1 of the Bluebook, which provides that citations to statutes no longer in force should be to a previous edition of a code where the statute last appeared. The Greenbook governs in this instance, so we get to deal with the headache of citing to the session law.

Citing to the original session law is not a big problem if a researcher has access to the General and Special Laws, but few smaller libraries have a full collection. Moreover, libraries that have lost certain volumes of the General and Special Laws have a difficult or impossible trying to replace those volumes. In our library’s case, we lost the volume that contained the session laws for the 63d Legislature in 1973. This volume contains the original enacted version of the modern Texas Penal Code as well as one of the codifications of the Texas Family Code. Our efforts to replace the volume have failed, and we really cannot say what we think about the person who misplaced the volume.

If a researcher needs to locate an older session law but does not have access to the General and Special Laws, there are a couple of options. These include the following:

1. Microfiche: State Session Laws (William S. Hein & Co., Inc.)

The most comprehensive alternative for Texas session laws is a microfiche set available through William S. Hein & Co., Inc. This set provides the full text of session laws dating back to the pre-statehood days of 1824.

2. Westlaw: 1987 to Present

Historical Texas session laws dating back to 1987 are available on Westlaw through the TX-LEGIS-OLD database.

3. Lexis: 1987 to present

Like Westlaw, Lexis has Texas session laws available from 1987 to the present. These are available in the TEX Library, TXALS File.

4. HeinOnline

The subscription database HeinOnline has made Texas session laws dating back to 2001 available in PDF form. This is a convenient source for recent laws, but it would be nice (not-so-subtle hint) if these session laws were available going much further back. As in, 1824 or so.

Maybe someday?

[Update, 10/8/08: Thanks to a comment from Shane Marmion at HeinOnline, we now know that the session laws dating back to 1824 will be added sometime in 2009. This is great news.]