Research Starters: Law and Legal Research Starter: Sources of the Law

U.S. and State Constitutions

U.S. Constitution

The U.S. Constitution guides our whole country with principles for the structure of our legal system and how the three branches of government have authority to make and enforce laws. Legislatures and judges make laws, but they cannot conflict with the U. S. Constitution or the Constitutions of any state.

The Charters of Freedom "A New World is at Hand"
The U.S. National Archives and Record Administration has a Website of the founding documents of our country: the Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on their "Charters of Freedom a New World is at Hand." Here is the link to the Constitution. The links to the Declaration and Bill of Rights are at the top of the page by clicking on the icons in the middle. There are also links from important personages in history about the impact of these charters.

Texas Constitution

TCAS Home Texas Constitution
The Legislative Reference Library of Texas has an excellent webpage for the Texas Constitution. You can view and save the contents by Preamble and Articles in the formats of pdf, html, and a Word document.

Federal and State Administrative Law

Regulations.gov Featured Regulations - free Website
This link will take you to the browse page of the regulations.gov Website to search for regulations in various industries and areas. You can go into each industry by clicking on the heading.

Federal and state legislatures create agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. These agencies are overseen by the President or governors after they are created by the U. S. Congress or state legislatures. The agencies issue regulations which explain and expand the federal and state statutes. These regulations then become part of administrative law.

Texas Administrative Code - free Website
The Texas Secretary of State's Website posts the Texas Administrative Code. Click on View the Current Texas Administrative Code and then go into each title to view that area.

Federal and State Statutes

Law Library of Congress at the Library of Congress Federal Statutes Research Guide
This Website provides a wealth of information about the statutes of our country and about their sources, subject arrangement, and locating them.

Federal and State Statutes

Statutes are laws passed by federal and state legislatures. As bills are passed into laws over time, they are written down into codes. Federal and state statutes are organized by subject matter.

TCAS Home Texas Statutes
The Legislative Reference Library of Texas has a page on their free Website to the Texas Statutes. You can search by using the quick search at the top by code, article, and/or section or by clicking on the Texas Statutes towards the bottom of the page.

Local Ordinances

Code of Ordinances City of San Antonio
The Municode database has the current Code of the City of San Antonio, the Supplement History Table, all the Articles of the Charter, all the Chapters of the Code, the Code Comparitive Table, and the Statutory Reference Table.

Local governments like city councils and county boards pass ordinances which become zoning codes, health codes, building codes, and so on. These ordinances are then enforced and regulated by the local governments which create them.

Municode Code Library
If the municipal code is in the database library, you can look up a code of a municipality by state and city in the Municode.
Bexar County homepage
Here is the main page for the county. To look up ordinances for the county of Bexar, you'll need to look in the various departments like the Fire Marshall and Estray Animal Notices links.

Law and Legal Research Starter