Chat with us This guide is designed to help you understand and
find statutes (codes or acts). It is not meant to be
comprehensive. For a complete guide of legislative materials,
check out this HLS guide to Legislative History. Here's a great
tutorial on statutory research from the Georgetown Law Library.
For all other research help at HLS, email, call, chat, text us:
Ask a Librarian. Statutes are laws enacted by legislatures, such
as the US Congress. Statutes are typically the place to begin
research of primary legal sources. Subject only to
constitutional control, they authorize promulgation of
administrative regulations and can overturn or modify court
decisions that themselves are sometimes concerned with staturory
interpretation. In the US, both the federal government and
individual states have the power to pass statutes or laws. Some
laws are handled exclusively by the federal government or
Congress, while others are handled exclusively by the states.
Still other laws are the subject of both state and fe