Legal Research: Pennsylvania

Codifications

The process of creating a consolidated statutory code that has been going on in Pennsylvania for the past thirty years has created much confusion. Before this all started, the legal researcher consulted the unofficial commercial codification of Pennsylvania statutes, Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes for any statutory questions and double checked the text in the session laws which were the positive law source. At some point in the late sixties the State decided that things would be easier if a codification were the positive law source rather than the Laws of Pennsylvania. Thus the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes were born. In planning this, someone decided that the arrangement Purdon's used in organizing the statutes would not suit the purposes of the new official codification so a new arrangement was proposed. The publishers of Purdon's, West and Bisel, agreed to republish titles in Purdon's to reflect the new official arrangement as the state released the titles in the Consolidated Statutes. Everything would have worked out fine if the state could have published the Consolidated Statutes overnight, but of course they didn't. Thirty years later only about two-thirds of the state statutes have been published in the Consolidated Statutes. Because of this, Purdon's is a hybrid reflecting two different organizational schemes. In several instances there are two different groups of statutes sharing the same title number, one is consolidated while the other is the original Purdon's scheme. This situation arises when the State publishes a consolidated title but hasn't done anything with the material occupying the same title number in the Purdon's scheme.

The advantage to using a codification is the arrangement of all statutes on the same subject together and the constant replacement and removal of text as changes are made. Purdon's adds to this the inclusion of annotations to court decisions interpreting the statute, references to state and national legal encyclopedias, citations to law review articles on the same subject, cross references to statutes in the same area, and recently they have been including citations to the state administrative code.

Access to the set is through a two volume paperback index located at the end of the set which is replaced annually around the time that the pocket supplements to the whole set are replaced. These supplements generally contain the text of new statutes, amendments, notices of repealed statutes, and annotations to cases handed down since the hardbound volume was last published. When the pocket parts reach a certain thickness the publisher starts issuing them in a pamphlet form which then sit on the shelf next to the hardcover volume. Throughout the year Purdon's Legislative Service is published in pamphlet form. It serves to update the Purdon's pocket parts by reprinting the text of recently passed legislation in session law format and recently adopted court rules. The number of pamphlets published by this service is dependent upon the amount of legislation passed in a given year, but usually a pamphlet is published every two to three months. The Legislative Service pamphlets are not cumulative throughout the year, but the indexes in the back of each pamphlet are. Therefore the researcher only needs to consult the index in the most recent pamphlet to access information published in all. Another tool for use with Purdon's is the Interim Annotation Service which again updates the pocket parts by providing annotations which have been decided since the last publication. This tool is issued in September and January of each year. To use it you just look up the title and section number of your statute and any new annotations will be listed. It includes a handy table listing by act number any changes to Purdon's title and section numbers.

There are a couple of tricky situations the researcher runs into when using Purdon's. Very often when reading cases from the 1970's or older citations to titles 12, 17, and 19 will be found. For several decades these titles contained statutes covering procedural and jurisdictional matters and were thus cited to in thousands of decisions. In the late 1970's these titles were repealed and much of this material was recodified and placed in title 42. Title 42 of Purdon's is confusing in itself because it contains statutory material concerning judicial matters, rules of evidence, the rules of civil, criminal, appellate, and magistrates procedure, and the Code of Professional Responsibility. In the organizational scheme used in the Consolidated Statutes title 12 now contains commerce and trade statutes and title 17 houses acts relating to credit unions, while title 19 is not currently used.

Another problem that sometimes comes up relates to the renumbering of sections of a given title. Many of the titles in Purdon's have been rearranged at least once. To lead the researcher from the old section numbers to the new ones, disposition tables are published in the front of the hardbound volumes or if a limited number of sections are affected the table is sometimes inserted at the beginning of a chapter or similar grouping. In some titles the disposition table is only published in the first volume of that title. Recently a Master Disposition Tables pamphlet has been published that collects all this information into one source.

There may be times when you need to convert a session law citation into a Purdon's citation. The volumes labeled "tables", towards the end of the set, will allow you to do this. You must first look up your session law by date in the left hand column. Then locate the page or PL number where the statute begins. Each section listed will have a corresponding Purdon's citation in the right hand column.

An easy way to find a statutory definition for a term is to alphabetically go to the entry in the index labeled "words and phrases". There you will find listings for every term defined by a statute in Purdon's. Also, if you have a popular name of a Pennsylvania statute, the last of the paperback indexes contains a popular name table to provide the citation.

Purdon's has been available since 1994 on compact disk through West Publishing. Besides the space saving ability, this format's main advantage over the print product is the ability to search for text utilizing key words. Although updated disks are issued quarterly, it has only been recently that new statutory text and amendments are added with each update. Previously only new annotations were added with each quarterly release while textual changes were made annually.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that several textual omissions have been discovered over the years in Purdons, some have been substantial. The publisher has made corrections in a diligent manner after these errors were pointed out but I believe it is prudent for the researcher to check the Consolidated Statutes or the Laws of Pennsylvania before citing statutory language.

The text of both consolidated and unconsolidated statutory code sections is available on the Internet at http://members.aol.com/StatutesPA/Index.html. This site has no search facilities so you need to know your statutory citation in advance.