Privacy & Information Law Research Guide

There are a large number of statutes at the state and federal levels that govern various aspects of privacy and information law; a complete review of these is beyond the scope of this guide.  If you do not know which statutes govern the issue you are researching, you may want to begin with a treatise, such as one or more listed on the Secondary Sources page of this guide. (Several of the treatises include appendices or sections on state laws.  A few of the e-Resource Centers and Treatise Collections have state-specific privacy law treatises.)

• For information on statutory research generally, including how to use an annotated code, see our Finding Statutes Research Guide and the Statutory Research Tutorial. 
• For help finding the U.S.C, U.S.C.A, and U.S.C.S. in print and online, see the "Finding Federal Statutes" box, left. 
• For help finding a specific state's statutes, consult that state's research guide.

Select additional resources on privacy and information law statutes at the state and federal levels are listed below. (This is not a comprehensive list.)

Fifty-state surveys track a single topic across the statutes (& sometimes regulations) of all 50 states.  They usually take the form of a state-by-state table or chart containing the citations to the laws on the given topic in each state, but generally contain little or no analysis. A 50-State Survey will not be available for every/all topics, but, if there is one, it can serve as a valuable starting point when conducting multi-jurisdictional research on a topic.

Check each of the below sources to see if there is a 50-state-survey already compiled for your topic.  Be sure also to identify when a compiled survey was completed and always update the information.

50-State Surveys

Additional Resources for 50-State Surveys

Web: Note that you can sometimes find multi-state surveys or multi-state issue-trackers online, such as on the websites of centers, professional associations, non-governmental organizations and private firms that focus on particular areas of the law, e.g., Plaintiff's Medical Care and Treatment—Discovery and Evidentiary Issues by the American Bar Association; Legal Innovation Regulatory Survey (2020) by the American Bar Association; 50-State Surveys by Butler Snow LLP; 50-State Surveys / Charts by the American Financial Services Association, etc. In general, to locate compiled reports by non-profit groups using Google, try searching for: site:.org "state survey" [keyword(s)].  

Texts & Treatises: Nationally-scoped treatises on a topic often include state-by-state treatments that will include citations to equivalent laws in each state (e.g. they may have sections or chapters on each state, state-by-state comparison tables, or information in their appendices that describe or reference the laws in each state). Our topically-organized Treatise Finders, while not comprehensive, are a great place to begin. Beyond this, check both Lexis and Westlaw's collections for relevant national treatises, as each platform has unique titles not available in the other. Books and reports on a topic across multiple jurisdictions may also be available in our library's print or digital collection; to search for these, perform a search in the Library Catalog using the term "fifty-state," "state-by-state" or "50-state."

ALRs: American Law Reports (ALRs) track a single, narrow legal issue across all U.S. jurisdictions. While there is not one on every topic, when there is one on-point you will find that they include both substantive analysis and useful research tools (such as a Table of Laws with primary authorities from every relevant jurisdiction as well as cross-references to other secondary sources and research tools). ALRs are available on both Westlaw and Lexis.

Journals: Occasionally, a multi-jurisdictional survey may be published in law reviews. In most instances, the title of the article will contain the phrase "50 state survey" or "state survey."  For more on finding articles using article indices and full-text databases, consult our Articles Research Guide.  Multi-state legislative reports might also be published on SSRN, which is freely available online.

Custom Multi-State Survey and Chart-Building Tools

These relatively recent tools to the legal research market allow you to construct custom state law comparisons; however, so far, their usefulness can can be limited (e.g. to select pre-populated topics), and they may not be comprehensive. It is usually best to supplement them with your own research in order to address possible gaps.