New California Legislative Information website Read More ...

Today is the last day for bill passage. The governor has until September 30th to sign or veto. Read More ...

McGeorge Law Review issue on California Legislation Read More ...

An optimistic view of California's future Read More ...

Criticism from California's Chief Justice Read More ...

"Introduction to the California Style Manual" Read More ...

The law librarians at Boalt Hall have recently created a research guide for California ballot measures. These ballot measures often have profound consequences for the people of California, yet they are notoriously difficult to research. This research guide is recommended for students doing research in this area. Read More ...

FindLaw and the League of California Cities has city codes and ordinances available through their websites Read More ...

A revised online guide to California legislative history research Read More ...

Much media attention regarding the end of the 2005-2006 California legislative session has focused on the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 - AB32 - limiting carbon dioxide emissions. However, an article in Saturday's Los Angeles Times by Evan Halper concentrates instead on bills that legislators attempted to push through the legislature toward the very end of the session: "Last Minute Bills Receive Little Scrutiny" (September 2, 2006). Read More ...

We’ve recently updated two of our research guides.  Heafey’s "California Legal Research Guide" furnishes tips on researching California law using treatises or legal encyclopedias, annotated codes, and case digests.  Our "Guide to American Law Reports" provides information on how to use ALR, a multi-volume secondary source that provides detailed articles about selected topics in state and federal law.   Both of these guides are excellent resources for students who are just beginning to familiarize themselves with legal research.  As always, you can find electronic copies of every Heafey research guide on this page.

The Judicial Council of California announced last Friday that it has approved "a major reorganization of the California Rules of Court."  Most of the changes involve renumbering, reordering, and rewording the rules "to make them clearer, better organized, and easier to read."  The changes will become effective on January 1, 2007, and you can read a complete description of the changes in this report.

If you’ve ever had to research California legislative history, you know that the amount of available material varies wildly depending upon the era that you’re researching.  For example, if you’re researching the history of a recent legislative enactment (1993-present), you’ll find a wealth of committee analyses, procedural histories, amended versions of the bill, and more on the Official California Legislative Information website, which is maintained by the Office of the Legislative Counsel.  But if you have to venture into pre-1970 legislative history, you’ll find it much tougher to track down materials.  When you only turn up a few short comments on 1955 legislation after exhaustive research, you usually find yourself scratching your head and wondering, "Is that all that I can expect to find?" Until now, there haven’t been many research guides that attempt to describe the kinds of materials that researchers can expect to find from different eras in California legislative history.  However, I discovered an excellent overview of the types of California legislative documents available in different eras when I attended Jan Raymond and Carolina Rose’s very informative presentation on California legislative history research a few weeks ago.  The handout provides information about legislative documents from the following eras:  1993 to present; 1970 to 1992; 1943 to 1969; 1900 to 1942; and 1849 to 1899.  Jan and Carolina also have a few helpful tips on the legislative history research process in this handout.

Like most librarians, I have a few "top 10" research guides that I recommend to patrons.  Today, I’m featuring one of my favorite guides on researching California legislative history by UC Hastings’ Susan Nevelow Mart.  The guide gives researchers an intuitive, step-by-step introduction to the mysteries of California legislative history research and identifies all of the key materials that you’ll need.   --Posted by Amy Wright

A recent opinion from the Third District, California Court of Appeal sheds light on which documents can be considered part of a California statute’s legislative history.  In Kaufman & Broad Communities, Inc. v. Performance Plastering, Inc., 133 Cal. App. 4th 26 (2005), Judge Sims notes wryly that "many attorneys apparently believe that every scrap of paper that is generated in the legislative process constitutes the proper subject of judicial notice . . . [t]his must stop."  Id. at 29. Judge Sims proceeds to devote a substantial portion of his opinion to a discussion of exactly which "documents . . . constitute cognizable legislative history."  Id.  A few examples of documents discussed in the opinion that obviously do not constitute legislative history:  magazine articles, letters to the governor in favor of a bill, and documents of unknown author or origin. 

Thanks to Nanna Frye, law librarian with the California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, for highlighting this opinion.