From time immemorial, the chronological published Laws of Pennsylvania have been referred to as the "Pamphlet Laws" [cited P.L. ____, the blank being a page number.] Statutes in their order of passage (sometimes referred to as the "Session Laws,") which ultimately will be published in the Pamphlet Laws, first were made available on the World Wide Web through the offices of the late Italo Cappabianca, state representative from Erie County. Representative Cappabianca passed away in 2001, but was a pioneer in using the internet to distribute the law. More recently, the General Assembly has created an Electronic Bill Room where all bills which have been introduced can be seen. The Legislature site, however, fails to clearly indicate which bills ultimately become law. Further, a chronological list of statutes has limited usefulness for legal research. A topical arrangement is needed.
In 1824, a lawyer named John Purdon (1784-1835) first published his digest of Pennsylvania statutes, and later editions of his topical, alphabetical arrangement of the laws have been valued ever since. Even today, his arrangement of Pennsylvania statutes is being followed in the legislative efforts to codify the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes. West Publishing Company now owns a copyright on the research aids contained in the current edition of "Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes Annotated", which is said to include (with exceptions such as the annual budgetary enactments) all general Pennsylvania statutes not previously repealed.
In our web site we have attempted to make laws available to the general public in a form more accessible than anywhere else. However, it should go without saying that law is not easily researched, and whether laws are up-to-date is not easy to determine. After all, this is why law students spend three years preparing to take the bar exam! Partly for this reason (and partly as a function of time available,) we have not yet attempted to install a search engine at our site. Anyone who knows what he or she is looking for probably can find it, or will learn that I have not yet posted it. On the other hand, novices will not gain unjustified ease after searching for a particular word or phrase and coming up empty after the search. The Pennsylvania Statutes site is a "usually you only get what you pay for" proposition.
The Pennsylvania statutory citation situation presently is analagous to the federal "Statutes at Large" and the "United States Code". The former is the chronological list of laws passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by the President. The latter is a code of the laws enacted by the various statutes. Unlike the federal arrangement, however, Pennsylvania now has only codifed about half of its statutes, after almost thirty years, whereas the United States Code is complete. See the article by Marc Silverman on Pennsylvania Legal Research at the University of Pittsburgh Law School web site for further information about the codification of Pennsylvania laws.
Unconsolidated Pennsylvania statutory law is cited correctly by reference to the date of enactment of the original Act of the General Assembly, followed by the page reference in that year's publication of the Pamphlet Laws, followed by the section of the act in question. [e.g., Act of March 10, 1949, P.L. 30, § 101.] Sometimes, an Act number also is referenced, assigned consecutively to bills passed in each legislative session. [e.g., No. ______.] That number is necessary for the laws online because a page number will not be known until after the printed edition is made available.
However, scores of thousands of reported opinions by judges, treatises by scholars, and briefs by lawyers have referred to the Pennsylvania statutes in the public domain according to their customary "___ P.S. §___" citation. [The first blank is the Title {i.e., subject} number and the second blank is a section number, both assigned by West Publishing Company for the unconsolidated statutes and by the legislature for the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes.] In order to give the correct and full citation to a statute, users of this website will have to refer to "Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes Annotated" which, as one of its many benefits, provides the enactment information for each section. This website is not intended to compete with the West Group publication, merely to make Pennsylvania statutes, court rules, and related laws more readily available to the general public.
The Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes should be cited by reference to the title and section number in the format "___ Pa.C.S. §___", the first blank again being the title number and the second blank the section number. [See, 1 Pa.C.S. § 102,] The difference between "___ P.S. ___" and "___ Pa.C.S. ___" denotes the difference between statutes not yet officially consolidated by the legislature and those so officially enacted in consolidated form.
The Pennsylvania Statutes website uses the historic, traditional and customary order for unconsolidated statutes, interspersed among the order for the anticipated Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes. In addition, for ease of reference an effort has been made to color-code the statutes so that those which are part of the Consolidated Statutes appear with a blue/purple background and those which are part of the Pennsylvania Statutes not yet consolidated appear with a green background. This color scheme is not part of the original plan for this website so some pages are still being conformed to it, and the color of all pages may not yet reliably indicate the correct attribute of the statute.
As resources more and more become online, perhaps a different numbering system for laws will develop. We may (at some future date) try to innovate one here! For purposes of this web resource, the technical citations of unconsolidated statutes are omitted in favor of the customary, for the present time at least.
The unconsolidated statutes as enacted were divided in a variety of ways. Some laws were divided into "chapters", others into "articles", still others by "subparts", etc. None of these are necessary for purposes of citation, and they sometimes have caused confusion. Therefore, they may not always be reflected online at our website.
Here is an example of a precise citation to one of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes under current practice: The Associations Code was enacted as the Act of December 21, 1988, P.L. 1444, No. 177. However, it is also a part of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes and, as such, may be cited as 15 Pa.C.S. section 101, et seq. Either citation is correct. Where the former form is used, however, it is customary to include the traditional arrangement in parentheses, such as: Act of December 21, 1988, P.L. 1444, No. 177 (15 Pa.C.S. section 101, et seq.)