Finding Fifty-State Surveys in Jenkins’ Collection

If you’ve been tasked with compiling and comparing laws across states, Jenkins provides access to various fifty-state surveys that may help save you time. Such surveys can be invaluable tools for gaining a comprehensive overview of laws and regulations across the nation, allowing users to spot legal trends and evaluate jurisdictional differences, even despite varying terminology. 

Here are a handful of places where you can find multi-state surveys, either online or within Jenkins’ resources. 

HeinOnline hosts the National Survey of State Laws, which is derived from Rich Leiter’s print editions of the same name. Updated regularly, this database provides an overview of over 60 “of the most-asked about and controversial legal topics in the United States” in chart format. Pro-tip: If printing or downloading, click the blue printer icon to print or to Save as PDF, and change the “Layout” to “Landscape” to make the entire chart visible. 

Jenkins’s subscription to Westlaw includes both 50 State Statutory Surveys and 50 State Regulatory Surveys (found under Secondary Sources), with charts covering both state and federal law on a wide range of topics. The statutory surveys touch on categories such as AI, education, family law, financial services, and trusts and estates, while the regulatory surveys address topics like Blue Sky Laws, election law, employment, gaming, health care, and much more. Westlaw also offers a customizable State Q&A Comparison Tool via Practial Law. Once in Practical Law, look for the Tools menu in the top right-hand corner of the page.

Our onsite Lexis+ subscription similarly provides access to a State Law Comparison Tool, found on the right hand side of the Practical Guidance main page. Lexis+ also has ABA titles like Fifty-State Survey: The Law of Class Action and Fifty-State Survey: Daubert v. Frye-Admissibility of Expert Testimony.

Both Bloomberg Law’s Chart Builder and VitalLaw’s Smart Charts tools allow Jenkins visitors to create state-by-state surveys on different subjects while onsite. For more information, read our blog posts on Bloomberg’s Chart Builder here and on VitalLaw’s (formerly Cheetah) practice areas and Smart Charts here.  

The library’s Fastcase (available remotely) subscription includes books that devote a chapter to each state’s laws on a particular topic. For example, its collection of Treatises and Books includes titles such as Business Torts: A Fifty-State Guide and Fifty State Construction Lien and Bond Law.

For more ideas on where to find articles, books, websites, and other sources for fifty state surveys on hundreds of topics, users can search Cheryl Nyberg’s Subject Compilation of State Laws via HeinOnline. 

You can also search Jenkins’ catalog for "fifty state" or for "state by state" for additional titles.

Finally, there are some free online resources such as Justia's 50 State Surveys and the customizable NCSL 50-State Searchable Bill Tracking Databases.