Research in Vermont Laws

Vermont Statutes Annotated (V.S.A.)
consists of a set of green volumes – there’s probably a set in your public library or at your town office. The printed set includes a 2 volume index.

Vermont Statutes Online
Vermont Statutes Online is available on the Vermont legislative website at http://www.leg.state.vt.us/statutes/statutes2.htm According to the website, this is a convenient but unofficial version. You can also get to Vermont Statutes Online on the Hartness Library System website. Here’s the path. Hartness Library website -> Reference -> Scroll down to Vermont. Look for Statutes Annotated

The online version does not include the index that you would find with the print version. Instead, scroll down to the end of the Statutes, and use Vermont Statutes and Court Rules at LexisNexis Type in the law topic you’re searching – e.g. civil union This is essentially a keyword search – and will give you all the places in Vermont Statutes that refer to Civil Unions.

Vermont Statutes Annotated via Lexis-Nexis.
An official version of V.S.A. is available via Lexis-Nexis. This includes annotations (history of changes in the statute) and the dates of the laws; the dates are a necessary part of citing statutes. To get to the V.S.A., use this path: Hartness Library website ->Articles -> Lexis-Nexis

Click on Legal Research on the left side of the Lexis page. On the next page, look for the heading “Codes and Regulations”, and then State Code. Select Vermont. This will bring you to a keyword search.

Click on the underlined title to see the results. This search is similar to the one you can access from the Vermont Statutes Online page – but not quite the same. You may have better luck with one than the other.

Following a Bill during the Legislative Session
During the Legislative session, you can also monitor the progress of a bill in the Vermont Legislature using this site: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/database/search/search.cfm

Citing Statutes
Both APA and MLA formats recommend using The Bluebook for format for citing statutes and other legal documents in a Works Cited or Reference List. Here’s one acceptable approach: Unprofessional Conduct, 3 V.S.A. § 129-3-13 (2006).

Note: you get the section mark (the squiggly thing) in msWord by clicking on Insert, Symbols, Special Characters.