How Do I Find an Older Version of the ORC?

You’d be surprised how often it comes up in legal practice – you’re researching an issue, only to realize that you need to see the law in Ohio as it was at the time of the incident. This might come up in a criminal law situation, or in something related to domestic relations, taxation, local government law, or another context.

You may be familiar with searching the Ohio Revised Code in Lexis and Westlaw, but when you search in these databases you realize that they may not cover the years that you need to find your older ORC section. What to do?

Luckily, we have a research guide for that! Our Ohio Primary Law Research Guide includes two key tabs – Finding Prior Versions of an ORC Section and Historical Statutes / Codes. There you’ll learn about the history or credits notation in an annotated code section, and resources in databases and books that can help you track down what you need. We have print copies of older ORCs here in the library.

If you need more help with finding older ORC sections, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at research.services@law.csuohio.edu