Pennsylvania Session Laws on HeinOnline Now Indexed to Inception

Pennsylvania Session Laws, the compilation of the acts passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature, are available on HeinOnline and are now indexed back to inception!

Session laws, also referred to as acts, are "the body of statutes enacted by a legislature during a particular annual, biennial, or special session" (Session Laws, Black’s Law Dictionary, 10th ed. 2014). In Pennsylvania, these may also be called pamphlet laws. The Pennsylvania Session Laws are available on HeinOnline, a membership database available to most Jenkins members.

HeinOnline has been working on indexing all state session laws back to inception. Last year Hein completed the indexing for Pennsylvania. Now the Sessions Law: Pennsylvania library on HeinOnline is searchable by Act and P.L. numbers back to 1700.

Using the Session Laws Quick Locator, Jenkins members can use the year plus either the act number or the P.L. number to find Pennsylvania acts. For example, to find the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code of 1976 by act number, enter 1976 in the "Year" field and 81 in the "Chapter/Act" field, then click "Search":

This will take you to the first page of the Act:

To find the 2012 amendment to the Vehicle Code by P.L. number, enter 2012 in the "Year" field and 27 in the "Page" field, then click "Search" (quick tip: in Pennsylvania, the P.L. number, or Pamphlet Law number, is the page number the act begins on in the Laws of the General Assembly):

This will take you the page 27, the page where the act begins:

Users can also conduct a keyword search to search across all 300+ years of Pennsylvania Session Laws using the "Search this title" box:

Other states' session laws indexed back to inception on HeinOnline include California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, and Texas. The remaining states are all indexed back to 2000. Read more about this on going project on Hein's blog.

The Pennsylvania Session Laws can be found in other resources, including in print in the Laws of the General Assembly, on the library's Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law computers, and for free online from the Pennsylvania Legislature. For a detailed list of these resources, see our Pennsylvania Session Laws research guide.

Need help navigating HeinOnline? HeinOnline has fantastic Knowledge Base filled with tips, training guides, and videos. Have additional questions? Ask us!