How to Search for Statutes
Click on the “Search” tab. Click on the “Legal” tab underneath “Search.” If you have a federal question, click on the blue hyperlinked text, “Federal Legal – U.S.”
On the next screen, scroll to “Find Statutes, Regulations, Administrative Materials & Court Rules." We recommend clicking on the text “USCS-United States Code Service: Code, Const., Rules.”
- This database include the U.S. Code, Constitution, Rules of Federal Procedure, and other federal rules.
- If you want to search any of the other databases, you can click on the “i” button for an explanation of what a particular database includes.
If you have a California question, scroll down until you see “State Legal–U.S.” in the left column. Click on the blue hyperlinked text “California.”
On the left hand side, scroll down to the section “Find Statutes, Regulations, Administrative Materials & Court Rules.” We recommend clicking on the text “CA – Deering’s California Codes Annotated, Constitution, Court Rules & ALS, Comb.”
- This database includes California statutes as well as the California Constitution and other rules.
Now you are ready to run a search. On the search page, choose "natural language" or "terms and connectors." Type your search terms and click “Search.” For more information about formulating successful searches, click here.
You can also click on “Advanced” next to the red search button to run a more advanced search that will look like this:
You can also browse the table of contents. Below the Search Text box, you will see a list of chapters proceeded by a box with a plus next to it.
You can click on the plus signs to drill down to your area of interest. Once you see blue hyperlinked text, you have reached a section with no further subdivisions. You can click on the blue hyperlinked text to read that section of the code.
