50-State / Multi-Jurisdiction Surveys

Westlaw and Lexis Advance both include a collection of 50-state surveys on a variety of topics. Both services start with a list of broad areas of law and allow you to drill down to more narrow topics. These resources have the added benefit of providing hyperlinks directly to the relevant statute or regulation so you can click through to read the language yourself.

Bloomberg Law's Chart Builder function allows you to create customized comparison charts for state statutes on a variety of topics. You can select all states or only a few to compare and contrast. Topical areas include Banking & Consumer Finance, Health Care, Environmental Law, Labor & Employment, Corporate & Tax Law, Privacy & Data Security, and more! If you want additional instruction on how to use this resource, check out this information from Bloomberg Law's help page.

Authored by Gallagher Law Library Librarian Emeritus Cheryl Nyberg, Subject Compilation of State Laws is a great place to start your multi-state research. This publication pulls together multi-state surveys from a variety of sources, including websites, books, law review articles, court opinions, court briefs, and more. You can browse by subject area or, if accessing through HeinOnline, run a keyword search.

National Survey of State Laws "provides an overall view of some of the most sought-after and controversial legal topics in the United States. Users are able to make basic state-by-state comparisons of current state laws." Topics covered include abortion, drunk driving, food laws, gambling, lemon laws, minimum wage, and more. It is available both in print in the library or through HeinOnline.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is an organization whose mission revolves around insuring the effectiveness of and promoting communication between state legislatures. To that end, its publications provide detailed information on state legislation and policies related to a wide range of topics, including education, health, ethics, immigration, state-tribal issues, and more. As part of their work, they produce a number of state law or bill surveys on issues of interest. Some examples of surveys they have created include:

Local, national, and government organizations and associations will often compile state laws relevant to their interests. It can be fruitful to search for organizations related to your topic to see if they have created state surveys. When looking for organizations, one good place to start is the Encyclopedia of Associations. Here are a few examples of organizations that compile topical multi-state statutory surveys:

To find print books providing state surveys on your area of interest, you can try searching the library catalog for the term "state survey" or "state laws" plus keywords related to the topic you are interested in. There are many publications from the organizations like the American Bar Association or Bloomberg BNA that provide a breakdown of state laws on a particular topic. Below are a few examples of state survey print resources available in the library: