Finding California Primary Law

Use the "Advanced Search" link on the LexisNexis Academic search page and then select "Legal." From there, you have a number of ways to search for code sections.

• Under "Source," select CA-Deering's California Codes Annotated and run a full-text search with keywords in All Fields, or change to Citation.
• After opening one of your search results, you can navigate to the Next and Previous sections using the hyperlinked arrows. You can also browse the nearby and related code sections using the Table of Contents.
• The hyperlinked broader subdivision headings allow you to navigate to other parts of the code. 

Deering's on LexisNexis is updated very frequently. A “Current through . . . ” note appears near the top of the screen for each code section. As a general rule, California statutes enacted in a particular year do not go into effect until January 1st of the following year. LexisNexis does not incorporate newly enacted laws into its code database until they go into effect. 

On the California Legislative Information website, you can browse the table of contents for any California statutory code. If you have a citation, you can retrieve the section by first selecting the appropriate code. Browse the table of contents and look for the range of sections that includes your citation. You can also do a full-text search by selecting "Text Search." Note that the text of new laws is not incorporated into this website until the laws go into effect.