Ohio Law - Free Websites & Sources

Also see Ohio Legislative History Part II and Ohio Legislative History Part III. 

What is Legislative History?

Legislative history means the documents generated when the bill was going through the legislative process.  These documents can give insight into legislative intent.  They are persuasive as to legislative intent, but not binding on a court.

When to Make a Legislative Intent Argument

First, look to the language of the statute itself.  If the statute is ambigous, the court, in determining the intention of the legislature, may consider legislative history, the objective sought to be obtained, circumstances under which the statute was enacted and other factors as listed in Ohio Revised Code 1.49. For further discussion, see Kathleen M. Trafford, The Importance of Legislative History in Supreme Court Decisions, 27 Ohio Lawyer Sept. 2013, at 27 (via HeinOnline).  This article provides examples of cases where Ohio courts found legislative history persuasive.

How to find Ohio Legislative History:

In a nutshell, the steps are:

1.  If starting with an Ohio Revised Code section, you will need to identify the piece of legislation you are interested in.  Was it the Act creating that code section, or one of the Acts that later amended the code section? Use an annotated code (on Lexis or Westlaw) to find the acts which created or modified the Ohio Revised Code Section you are interested in.  (The free version of the Ohio Revised Code on the Internet contains some history of enacting and modifyng legislation, but not all.)  Underneath the text of the code section, there is a history or credits section listing this information.  It looks like this:

2.  Find legislative history documents corresponding to the Act (Session Law) you are interested in.   The easiest legislative history documents to find are the text of the act, different versions of the bill as it went through the legislative process and Legislative Service Commission Analysis.  For Acts 1997 and later, the Ohio General Assembly's webpage has legislative history documents accessible from the page for each bill.  If the Act was passed 1989 or later, a great place to start is Hannah Capitol Connection, a database accessible in the University of Akron Law Library and remotely to faculty, students and staff.

See:

Ohio Legal Research KFO75 .H357 2009 Chapter 10

You can contact these places for more obscure Ohio Legislative history documents:

Another idea is to contact the committee chairperson

Besides the Good Starting Points, above, you may want to look at:

When starting to look for Ohio Legislative Materials, it can be difficult to know where to look. Here's a quick look at where to find some specific materials!