Government Web Sites

All state government sites provide access to government information, laws and legislation on their Web site.  To quickly locate a state government website, simply enter in the same of the state and add .gov. For example, http://wisconsin.gov will bring you to Wisconsin’s official government Web site.  This works equally well from Alabama to Wyoming.

Once you are on the government page, look for a tab titled, “government,” and this will lead you to a link to the constitution, laws and rules of the state, as well as links to members of the House and Senate and Executive Branch of government.

Note that most state law libraries also provide access to government information, laws and legislation. For example, the Wisconsin State Law Library provides several valuable links to state and local law on their site.

The Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, (LRB), which is the host site for law and legislation in Wisconsin, also offers an alert service which can be set to monitor legislation. For more information on how to set up the LRB’s alert service, see the UW Law Library's Blog entry for this month located at the home page of the Law Library.

If you want to learn how to do a Wisconsin Legislative History, see the LRB guide, Researching Wisconsin Legislative History.

Other Places to Find State Law

Legal search engine, Findlaw.com provides an alphabetical listing of state resource sites, as well as a topical breakdown.

Another useful site for state law is American Law Sources On-line (ALSO).   You'll find links to case law, legislation and regulations for each state, as well as local law, periodicals, legal forms and more.  Links to uniform laws and model acts are also available.

Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on April 4, 2023

This article appears in the categories: Law Library

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