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POLS 2622: State and Local Government — Research current legislation in the state

Resources for researching development of public policy via a state's proposed and existing legislation, committee/commission work, news coverage, public polling, and court decision involving specific areas of policy.

Research current legislation in the state

The UConn library licenses access to the NexisUni database, which provides access to legislative, judicial, and news sources. To determine existing state legislation in a specific public policy area, I recommend:

  1. Start by searching across all existing state laws to determine which state statutes in particular are focused on the issue. Make note of the Title and Chapter of the statute(s). This will help you understand the organization of the state's Statutes overall, and browse the published statutes in step 2 to better understand the broader picture of what legislation exists in a policy area.
  2. Following the tips in the second screen capture below, use the links above any statute you found in step 1 to navigate to where that statute appears in the table of contents of the state's annotated code.
  3. Use the History notes in any relevant statute to link to the original legislation. This will give you the name(s) of the sponsor of the law, which can be helpful in understanding who is playing a prominent role in shaping legislation in a specific public policy area.

Step 1: Use NexisUni's Statutes and Legislation search to find current state statutes. After searching by keyword use the Jurisdiction filter (circled in the screen capture below) to the left of the search results to narrow by state. In these search results for state laws on cannabis the Jurisdiction filter can be used to limit results to Arkansas.

 

 

Step 2: use the links at the top of any statute to be dropped into the table of contents for statutes from the state. In the example below, information on the Higher Education Tuition Adjustment Fund appears in results for a search for higher education in the Arkansas state statutes. The law's location in the Arkansas Code Annotated is noted above the text of the law. In the screen capture below, this reference provides a helpful link to Subtitle 5 Postsecondary and Higher Education Generally. Click that link to browse the other legislation in that subtitle (see second screen capture below).

 

Brings you to the list of Titles of the Arkansas Code Annotated (the existing laws of the state, as organized in the published Code, with helpful annotations providing historical information, links to cases, etc.). Browse the relevant Titles, Subtitles, Chapters, Subchapters, to understand the existing legislation in the policy area.

 

 

Step 3: Note that laws will include a History note indicating the origin of the legislation (circled at foot of screen capture below). Follow the link to read the original legislation and determine the sponsor(s) (see screen capture that follows) to determine the legislator(s) most directly involved in the creation of the law.