There is a host of resources for finding state legislative1 and administrative legal materials in the Law Library, though these materials come in varied formats. This article will attempt to sort out the possibilities for research on the state level. Of course, the collection concentrates on collecting those materials dealing with the state of Alabama; however, there are significant resources for other states as well.

With respect to Alabama , the Law Library has a significant print collection of state legislative and administrative materials:

Code of Alabama, 1975 (including superseded volumes and pocket parts in storage). Also, the Law Library has prior codes for Alabama. The current code is shelved in three locations, the Alabama, Reference, and State Code sections on First Floor. The earlier codes can be found in the Alabama section (shelf 102).

Alabama Regulations: Department of Insurance (KFA/185/.A4/Reference). This volume, also commonly referred to as the NILS service, provides regulations and rules of the Insurance Department. A supplementary volume is the NILS’ Alabama Related Regulations (KFA/185/.A42/Reference) which provides regulations of other Alabama agencies which has an effect on the insurance market.

Alabama House Journal (beginning with the 1871-72 session). This set provides a documentary description of what went on in the House during that session. It includes House resolutions, bills, messages from the Governor’s Office and from the Alabama Senate, as well as roll call votes. This set can be found in the Alabama section on First Floor (shelf 101).

Alabama Senate Journal (beginning with the 1871-72 session). This set provides a documentary description of what went on in the Senate during that session. It includes Senate resolutions, bills, messages from the Governor’s Office and from the Alabama House, as well as roll call votes. This set can be found in the Alabama section on First Floor (shelf 101).

Acts of Alabama. This set of volumes provides the acts in the format passed by the state legislature. The acts are listed in chronological order as they are passed. This set can be found in the Alabama section on First Floor (shelves 101 and 102).

Alabama Administrative Code. This multi-volume set includes rules and regulations for most of Alabama’s state agencies. This set can be found in the Alabama section on First Floor (shelf 102).

Alabama Administrative Monthly (from 1982 to 2002; later editions are available on the web at Alabama Administrative Code). This set provides notices by state agencies of plans to adopt new rules or to change present rules of that agency. Additionally, this publication lists certification of new agency rules at the time of final adoption. This set is shelved in the Alabama section on First Floor (shelf 102).

The Law Library has the following resources available in microfiche format in Multimedia Room (#031B Lower Level). Please see a reference librarian or ask the desk attendant for help in accessing these collections:

Alabama Session Laws 1818-2004

Code of Alabama, 1975 (including superseded volumes and pocket parts)

Code of Alabama, Recompiled 1958 (including 1973 cumulative supplements)

Code of Alabama, 1940

Alabama Code of 1928, Annotated

Code of Alabama, 1923

Code of Alabama, 1897

Alabama Constitutional Convention documents for conventions of 1819, 1861, 1867, 1875 and 1901.

Through the resources of WESTLAW and LEXIS, law students have a large assortment of options for administrative and legislative research in Alabama:

LEXIS

Alabama Agencies & Attorney General Opinions, Combined (ALA; ALAGEN)

Alabama Public Service Commission Decisions (ALA; ALPUC)

Alabama Bulletins & Notices (ALA; ALBLTN)

Alabama Administrative Code (ALA; ALADMN)

Alabama Statutes, Constitution, Court Rules & ALS, Combined (ALA; ALCODE)

Alabama Advance Legislative Service (ALA; ALALS)

Alabama Legislative Bill History (ALA; ALLH)

Alabama Bill Tracking and Full-Text Bills (ALA; ALBILL)

RegAlert – Alabama Documents (ALA;RGALRT)

Alabama State Regulation Tracking (ALA; ALRGTR)

Alabama Environmental Administrative Decisions (ALA; ALENV)

Alabama Department of Revenue Administrative Opinions, Rules and Regulations (ALA; ALTAX)

WESTLAW

Alabama Statutes Annotated (AL-ST-ANN)

Alabama Legislative Service (AL-LEGIS)

Alabama Bill Tracking (AL-BILLTRK)

Alabama Bill Tracking-Full Text (AL-BILLTXT)

Alabama Blue Sky Regulations (ALSEC-REG)

Alabama Securities Administrative Decisions (ALSEC-ADMIN)

Alabama Administrative Code (AL-ADC)

Alabama Insurance Statutes, Regulations, and Bulletins (ALIN-COMBINED)

Alabama Regulation Tracking (AL-REGTRK)

Alabama Environmental Law Administrative Decisions (ALENV-ADMIN)

Alabama Environmental Records (EDR-AL)

Alabama Environmental, Health & Safety Forms (ENFLEX-FRM-AL)

Alabama Tax Regulations (ALTX-ADC)

Alabama Taxation Administrative Decisions (ALTX-ADMIN)

Westlaw eforms: Alabama State Courts and Agencies (AL-FRMS)

Sourcebook Alabama State Agencies (SB-AL-AGENCY)

Additionally, some of the Alabama agency and legislative materials can be found online at free sites as well:

Alabama Administrative Code

Code of Alabama 1975

For recent bills, resolutions, reports, amendments, substitutions, confirmations, end of day reports, etc., go to ALISON (Alabama Legislative Information System Online).

Other than the Alabama materials, the Law Library has a sizeable collection of legislative materials for other states as well. The State Code section contains current statutory print codes of all 50 states and territories on First Floor. Some print state session laws (acts) for the other states are shelved in the State Session Law section on First Floor on shelves 135-137. Additionally, the microfiche collection contains session laws as well as many of the superseded statutory state codes of the fifty states. (Yes, that includes old pocket parts, replaced volumes of the current state codes as well as the volumes of prior code editions in many cases!) The microfiche collection also contains documentation of the constitutional conventions of the individual states. LEXIS and WESTLAW provides online treatment similar to Alabama for other states’ legislative and administrative materials.

If you have any questions concerning access to these materials, please contact a reference librarian.

1 With respect to legislative materials, the most common reason to use these materials is to find a legislative history. Unfortunately, in the case of Alabama and many other states, the information usually desired in a history, such as evidence of specific intent for passing the legislation, from debates, committee reports, etc., is not available.

Recently, the nation has been mourning the death of our 38th President, Gerald R. Ford. The staff of Lucille Stewart Beeson Law Library recognize his contribution to the welfare of our country, but also remember his specific contribution to this library; on February 15, 1996, President Gerald R. Ford dedicated the new library facility that was named for Lucille Stewart Beeson. See more information on this event at the Samford Belltower.

The last two issues of Check It Out, listed many writing competitions open to law school students. Some of those contests are still open, and notices for new ones arrive periodically. For your chance to win cash awards, free trips, and publish in prestigious journals, consider any of the following competitions:

1. Bert W. Levit Essay Contest on lawyer liability for aiding and abetting a client's breach of fiduciary duty, open to Young Lawyers' Division or Law Student Division members of the ABA, awarding $5000 and a trip to Washington, D.C. (deadline February 16, 2007);

2. American College of Trial Lawyers’ essay contest on judicial independence awarding $10,000 for first place and $5000 for second place (deadline March 1, 2007);

3. The Houston Journal of International Law’s James Baker Hughes contest on international economic law awarding $500 and publication in the journal (deadline March 2, 2007);

4. American Immigration Law Foundation’s writing competition on American immigration and nationality law awarding $1000 (deadline March 12, 2007);

5. American College of Trust and Estate Counsel’s contest on trusts, estates, or related taxation with $5000 first prize, $3000 second prize, and $1000 third prize (deadline May 1, 2007);

6. National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys’ contest awarding $1500 plus a trip to Memphis for first place, $1000 for second, and $500 for third (deadline May 1, 2007);

7. The Warren Burger writing competition on legal excellence, civility, ethics or professionalism awarding $5000 and publication in the South Carolina Law Review (deadline June 15, 2007);

8. American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ contest on copyright law for third-year (and selected second-year) law students with prizes ranging from $250 to $3000 (deadline June 30, 2007);

9. The Tannenwald Foundation’s contest on state or federal tax law with $3500 first prize, $2500 second, and $1500 third (deadline July 2, 2007).

For more information, check the bulletin board outside Room #224 in the law school. If a topic piques your interest, ask Mrs. Janice Brantley for a copy of the posting.

Professor O. Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law has developed a website called “Famous Trials” with links to a narrative description of the background to many selected trials. These narratives are an interesting, easy read.

Cumberland’s faculty and students have a wealth of legal history and current information at their fingertips in a database provided by the Law Library. From the library’s home page, link to HeinOnline under the button for “Research Aids.”

HeinOnline is an electronic database of legal journal articles, federal registers, treaties, U.S. Supreme Court cases, and much more. Presently, HeinOnline contains more than twenty-four million pages of material including almost a thousand classic law books and a thousand journals. Hein continually adds new content to the database. HeinOnline is unique in several respects, most notably in providing information never before online.

The Law Journal Library covers periodical articles from the inception of each publication. Typically, services like Westlaw and Lexis cover journal articles from the 1980s forward. Greatly expanding that scope, HeinOnline provides full text searchable articles back to the late 1700s. Moreover, Hein’s PDF format is an exact duplicate of the original document and includes all charts, graphs, pictures, tables, photographs, and footnotes just as they appear in print.

A recent addition to the Law Journal Library is the Index to Periodical Articles Related to Law, edited by Roy Mersky and Donald Dunn. The practice of law is increasingly interdisciplinary. To meet such research needs, this index provides bibliographic information on law-related articles published worldwide from 1958 to date. Reach the index from the alphabetical list of journals or through the search function. Users may browse through the index, or search by author, title, keyword, or phrase.

Use HeinOnline’s Legal Classics library to search historically significant law books like Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769). The database includes many books listed in Morris Cohen’s Bibliography of Early American Law, A-rated titles in AALS Law Books Recommended for Libraries, and early British treatises.

Another recent enhancement to HeinOnline is the Code of Federal Regulations. Presently, the database offers full-text searching of all editions from 1938 to 1983. HeinOnline also links to GPO Access coverage of the CFR from 1996 to date. HeinOnline’s related Federal Register Library covers the Federal Register from its inception in 1936, Lists of Sections Affected, and more.

Besides the resources discussed above, HeinOnline also includes the following segments:

1. European Center for Minority Issues compiles reports and working papers from this German-Danish organization devoted to improving relations with minority groups throughout Europe.

2. Philip C. Jessup Library contains materials of the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition since 1960.

3. Treaties and Agreements Library cover all U.S. treaties and agreements, whether in-force, expired, or yet-to-be-published plus Treaties in Force, guides, indexes, state department documents, and more.

4. U.S. Attorney General Opinions covers official attorney general opinions (1791 - 1982), and Department of Justice counsel opinions (1977 - 1996).

5. U.S. Federal Legislative History Library offers full-text histories of many significant federal acts, a handy electronic version of Nancy Johnson’s Sources of Compiled Legislative History, and other guides.

6. U.S. Presidential Library includes messages, papers, and addresses of the chief executive starting with George Washington, the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from 1965 to date, and other related works.

7. U.S. Statutes at Large includes all laws and resolutions passed by the U.S. Congress since 1789.

8. U.S. Supreme Court Library contains cases from the official U.S. Reports from 1754 forward, preliminary prints, slip opinions, and links to pertinent books and periodicals.

To request a DVD/TV or VCR/TV, send an e-mail to lawmedia@samford.edu. Please include the date and time that the equipment is needed as well as where it should be delivered.

Has your laptop slowed down? There may be several reasons this has happened.

First check for viruses and spyware. If you don’t have virus protection yet or if your virus protection has expired -- Samford provides free McAfee for PCs and free Virex for Macs.

There are several good spyware scanners available online including Windows Defender, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, and Spybot.

After checking for viruses and spyware, be sure that there aren’t programs you don’t need to load each time you start your computer (examples: AIM, MSN Messenger, QuickTime). Click on Start and select Run. In the Run box, type msconfig. Click on the Startup tab – you will see a list of programs that may start each time with your computer. Some of these may be necessary, so be careful when removing the check from the box next to the program. When through unchecking programs, click the apply button and then restart.

Another helpful tool is Defragmentation. To defrag, click on Start and choose My Computer. A window will open that shows available drives. Right click on the C drive and choose properties from the menu. The local disk properties will appear: Click on the Tools tab and then click on the Defragment Now button. Defragmenting may take a while – be sure you have time to let it run. For help, contact Grace Simms, Computer Services Librarian, at glsimms@samford.edu or at 726-2687.

The CHECK IT OUT is published three times a semester. Your opinion is important to us! Send your ideas and/or comments to: Becky Hutto via e-mail at rmhutto@samford.edu. We welcome new ideas!