Researchers tasked with finding the legislative history of New York criminal statutes have long faced a daunting challenge.  By far the best source of this history is found in the records of the Temporary Commission on Revision of Penal Laws and Criminal Code, a state agency that functioned between 1961 and 1970.  Unfortunately, these published documents were not widely distributed to law libraries, nor was their research value generally recognized.  As a result, few libraries hold this collection, and the few libraries that do are unwilling to lend documents from it.  Thus the legislative history has been difficult to come by – until now.

The State Supreme Court Criminal Term Library for New York County has just released a digital collection of these records, available on its website:

http://www.nycourts.gov/library/nyc_criminal/library_resources.shtml

This free public resource is full-text searchable, and makes the documents accessible in PDF format.  For the first time ever, the legislative history of most modern New York criminal law – substantive and procedural – will be easily accessible to researchers.

DRAGNET (Database Retrieval Access using Google’s New Electronic Technology) is a popular feature of the Mendik Library’s Website that searches more than 80 recommended Websites of interest to legal researchers.  You can access DRAGNET directly from our homepage.  Now we’re incorporating Google’s Custom Search feature into two other areas of our site.

First, for more than a year, we’ve been linking to approximately 150 online legal journals whose Websites offer free access to their current issue, and often back issues as well. We’ve now added a Google Custom Search bar that lets you simultaneously search the full text of all those journals.  Second, we now employ the Google Custom feature to let you search the constitutions, statutory codes, and administrative codes of all 50 states simultaneously.

We’re continuing to develop and improve DRAGNET as well as adding to the collection of sources searched. We always welcome your suggestions.

The Mendik Library now subscribes to HeinOnline’s World Constitutions Illustrated, an excellent resource for anyone researching constitutional history. Organized by country, the site provides links to historical constitutional documents throughout the world in reverse chronological order.  Additional resources include Country Studies, the CIA World Factbook and the Modern Legal Systems Cyclopedia. Researchers will also find selected scholarly articles for download or print, a bibliography of constitutional works, as well as news feeds and external links relating to each country. HeinOnline plans to provide constitutions in every official language, and at least one English translation, for each of the 195 countries in the world.

To link directly to this terrific new source, search “World Constitutions Illustrated” in the Mendik Library Catalog, or go to the alphabetical list of libraries in HeinOnline (found on the Library’s home page under Electronic Resources)and click “World Constitutions Illustrated.”