Maryland Legislative History Resources: Codes

Here, we take a step-by-step look at tracing the legislative history of a Maryland statute.  In many cases, print resources mentioned herein have online analogues (and vice-versa).  Occasionally online information providers will offer a disclaimer to the effect that the material is unofficial, or not to be cited as authoritative in, e.g., court filings.  If that is indeed what you intend it for, then check and cite to the print version.

Modern editions of the Annotated Code of Maryland have a volume dedicated to conversion tables which can assist in determining when and in what fashion statutes have been renumbered, transferred, or repealed by the General Assembly.  The following tables can be found there:

• Acts Codified Subsequent to 1951--for each session law from 1951 to the present, the eventual disposition within the Annotated Code of Maryland is provided.  For example, Acts 1988, ch. 745 was eventually codified as Agriculture § 11-312; Acts 1988, ch. 792, § 2, was codified as Tax-General § 8-405.
• Table of Comparable Sections for Unnumbered Articles--this provides a table of pre-transfer statutes, along with their eventual location in the modern Code or other disposition.  For example, former Art. 16, § 199C is now located at Estates and Trusts, § 14-105.  Former Art. 16, § 92 was repealed in 1962.
• Table of Transferred and Renumbered Sections--this lists sections that were transferred or renumbered beginning with the 2006 Regular Session.

A code, as opposed to session laws, is a compilation of the current laws of a jurisdiction organized by subject.  For example, title 12 of the United States Code contains the laws relating to "Banks and Banking."  The Maryland Code is no different, comprising 34 subjects such as Transportation and Election Law, plus the Constitution, Rules of Court and the remainder of the 1957 Code.  The State of Maryland has been recodifying the 1957 Code by transferring portions of it into the modern subject headings since 1970 (see "Using the Legislative History Summary," below, and the Maryland Department of Legislative Services' excellent summary of the history of the Code Revision Project).   The remnants of the original 1957 Code are now down to two volumes, organized by article number (e.g., Art. 2B, dealing with alcoholic beverages).  Editions of the Code prior to 1957 (e.g., the 1951 Code) may also be relevant for your purposes, and may contain predecessor statutes to the one in which you're interested.

The State of Maryland has two official state codes, each by a different publisher.  Michie's Annotated Code of Maryland is published by LexisNexis, and has maroon or black covers.  The Michie's Code is the older of the two state codes, and the Law Library maintains superseded editions, including supplements, on the 12th floor.  Therefore, you may find working with this set throughout your research to be easier.  West's Annotated Code of Maryland is the newer of the two, and has tan-yellow covers.  Only the current edition is available at the Law Library, in the 7th-floor Reading Room.  The two sets are functionally identical, with the exception of the annotations each set's editors have provided.

Free online versions exist of both codes (see the Resources tab for links), but they are unannotated codes.  An unannotated code consists of only the text of the statute and, in the case of Maryland's codes, a legislative history summary.  Annotated codes, like the print versions discussed above, also contain case annotations and cross-references to other publications discussing the statute.  Annotated codes often contain Revision Notes which outline the nature of, and rationale behind, amendments to the statute, which can provide a useful summary of the statutory history, to a point--generally, only relatively-recent action is detailed.  For those with Westlaw or Lexis access, annotated versions of the Code are available through those services.

See also:  Michie's Maryland Code Online and West's Maryland Code Online.

The legislative history summary is contained after the text of the statute in both the annotated and unannotated versions of the Code.  It takes the form of a string of citations, like so:

An. Code 1957, art. 93, § 4-301; 1974, ch. 11, § 2.

This is the legislative history summary for Md. Ann. Code, Estates and Trusts, § 4-301, Who Can Be a Legatee.  It indicates that the original version of the statute was contained in the Annotated Code of 1957 as Article 93, § 4-301.  It also tells you that the statute has been amended once since its enactment, and that the session law so amending it is located in Laws of Maryland 1974, chapter 11, section 2.  That 1974 amendment transferred it into the then-new Estates and Trusts title as § 4-301.

Unfortunately, this summary is not complete.  Statutes often get renumbered when the articles in which they appear are reorganized.  The fact that our example is reported to be from "An. Code 1957" doesn't mean that it's been on the books since 1957--only that the version which was transferred into the modern Estates and Trusts title in 1974 was in the old code volumes at that location (art. 93, § 4-301).  It may have been enacted any time prior to 1974.  If there had been a predecessor statute to Art. 93, § 4-301, you would only get that information and related legislative history by looking up that pre-1974 version of the statute in a superseded code volume from 1973 or 1974.