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Ohio Primary Law Legal Research Guide: Historical Statutes

Covers Ohio cases, statutes, legislative history, regulations, and administrative decisions.

WestlawNext and Lexis

WestlawNext has older versions of the Ohio Revised Code going back to 1993. You can find by typing Ohio Statutes Annotated - Historical in the search box. They can also be located by bringing up the current code, and looking at the menus on the right hand side of the page.

Lexis Advance has the older versions back to 1996. To find: search for code section; click on "Archived code versions" link in box on right-hand side. There currently is no way to run a full-text search in archived codes on this platform.

Diagram History of Ohio Codes

Historical Codes

 

 

The 1953 Ohio Revised Code was created by revising and renumbering the General Code. The General Code was created by revising and renumbering the Revised Statutes. For information on the 1953 code revision, see Baldwin's Ohio Revised Code User Guide KFO 30 .A24 at page xxxvi.
 
The Franklin County Law Library has several iterations of the Ohio General Code at KFO 30.
 
The Library has several iterations of the Ohio Revised Statutes at KFO 30 (Reading Room). The Revised Statutes were the first complete codification of Ohio Laws.

 

Before 1880: Various compilations of Ohio statutes and laws of the Northwest Territory were published. The Library has some of these located at KFO 30 in the Reading Room. Please ask a librarian for assistance in using these materials.

Correlation Tables

If the researcher finds a General Code section in an old case, a correlation table will identify where this section was codified in the Ohio Revised Code.  There are also tables showing the corresponding sections in the General Code and the Revised Statutes.