Research Guides: Minnesota Law Research Guide: Statutory Law

Session Laws

When laws are enacted by the Minnesota Legislature, they initially appear as separate acts called "chapters." Chapters are numbered sequentially as they are enacted during each legislative session. All session laws are eventually published in a permanent bound set of volumes titled, Laws of Minnesota:

Session Laws of the State of Minnesota.
Call Number: Primary KFM5425 .A24
Publication Date: 1915-
Also more popularly known as "Laws of Minnesota."

Session Laws Online

Minnesota Session Laws
Minnesota Revisor of Statutes website. Coverage from the 1st Territorial Legislature to current.

Databases for Minnesota Session Laws:
HeinOnline, Bloomberg Law, Westlaw and WestlawNext Campus Research.

Statutes

Statutes, a.k.a. codes, contain the current laws in force. Statutes are arranged topically so that related laws are grouped together. As new session laws are enacted, they are added to the stautes. As part of this "codification" process, the new law will be renumbered to fit into the numbering scheme of the statutes set. The official statutes for Minnesota is titled, Minnesota Statutes.

Minnesota Statutes
Call Number: Primary KFM5429 .M56
Official code. Appears biennially with an interim annual supplement.
Minnesota Statutes Annotated
Call Number: Primary KFM5430 1946 .A315
Publication Date: 1946-
Unofficial version of the Minnesota Statutes published by West. Provides the text of that statutes and annotations to legislative history, interpretive cases, regulations, and secondary sources that are related to specific statute provisions. Print volumes in Reference Office and Primary Collection (1st floor).

Minnesota Statutes Online

Minnesota Statutes
Minnesota's current statutes and a complete archive of prior statutes back to the 1851 Minnesota Territorial Statutes are available from the Revisor of Statutes website.

Databases for Minnesota Statutes (unofficial annotated versions):

Bloomberg Law, Lexis, Westlaw, and Westlaw Campus Research.