State Legal Research: General and Multi-Jurisdictional

A guide that describes in general the typical research sources commonly found across all of our state resources guides.

Researching State Constitutions

The library's state resources guides will point directly to the text of each state's constitution found on Lexis and Westlaw, as well as HeinOnline's State Constitutions Illustrated which provides the text of every constitution for a state and offer related documents, starting from before statehood. Each of our state resources guide will also provide links to historical constitutional texts whenever provided by the state's archives.

For provision-by-provision commentary on a state's constitution with analysis of the state's current constitution and its evolution, review the Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States. Editions held by the Law Library will be found in the catalog, including those published under a former series title.


Additional Resources for State Constitutional Research

Book of States: Published by The Council of State Governments, provides an annual summary of each state's constitutional changes and themes & patterns in amendments as well as tables and infographics on constitutional amendment procedures and procedures for calling constitutional conventions.

Read the Law Library's Constitutional Law and History Research Guide: State Constitutional Law page. In addition to the treatises and other secondary sources recommended in that guide, search for law reviews within journals that focus on constitutional law. These journals include:

State Court Report: Covers state constitutional developments across the 50 states' high courts, collecting nonpartisan news sources and wide-ranging perspectives and commentaries from academics, practitioners, judges and journalists. Includes State Case Database, a searchable collection of decisions and pending cases shaping state constitutional law.

For recent commentaries on court decisions and state constitutions, search for keyword(s) in Constitutional Law Prof Blog.

Comparative constitutional search of legal topics may be performed on Lexis' Advanced Search: Constitutions and Westlaw's Advanced Search: Statutes & Court Rules (filter search results by Content Type: Constitutions).