The Utah Legislature is currently in session. Bills are being introduced, discussed, debated, amended, and some will ultimately be passed, signed by the Governor and become law. Once they become law they will be known as session laws and will be compiled together with other laws from the session in the “Laws of Utah.” These session laws will then be divided up into different parts of the Utah Code. While the Utah Code is the primary place researchers look for statutes, session laws can be very valuable when you want to see what a law looked like when it was passed and are essential legislative history documents.
All states have session laws that go through a similar process of enactment and as a researcher you may need to find state session laws. For a few years, HeinOnline has been digitizing state session laws that were previously only available in microfiche. Last year, HeinOnline finished that digitization project and now state session laws are available back to each state’s inception. This is a great boon to researchers as now state session laws are searchable and much more easily available.