Reason to celebrate: The (print) 2013 Oregon Revised Statutes (ORSs) are In The Law Library – Hurrah!
The online version is likely not far behind.
(The print volumes are burnt orange 🙂
Superseded ORSs, formerly on the Oregon Legislature’s old website, along with audio recordings, minutes, and exhibits, are missing in action only temporarily while the Legislature’s website upgrade is in progress.
We have been reassured by Legislative Counsel that the superseded ORSs will be on the new website shortly. (New websites take time, lots of time to pull themselves together, even after launch.)
In the meantime:
The new Oregon Legislature’s website goes live Oct 1, 2013. This is great news for legislative and legal researchers (and government wonks, too).
1) Superseded ORS, 1953 – present: Legislative Counsel been posting their superseded digital ORS files and soon all the superseded ORS images scanned by the Washington County Law Library, 1953-1993, will be added to the Legislature’s database. (Now you can find those superseded statutes from the Bills/Laws pages of the Legislature’s website, but we’re not sure where they’ll reside in the update. Maybe the same place or not. Either way, research is a grand adventure!)
2) Click on the Legislature’s New Website Going Live October 1st link for a list of many more updates.
It’s not easy to find a simple online explanation of the difference between Official and Unofficial sources of law. My explanation may fill in that gap – or not, depending on your specific question. (And a blog post this long can hardly be called “simple,” but such is life — and law.)
1) In a nutshell, an official source is a source that has been authorized by an official body, such as a court or a legislature. In Oregon, for example, we have the official statutes of Oregon, published in the Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS), by the Oregon Legislature, through Legislative Counsel. (This official statutory compilation should not be confused with Oregon Laws, which is the official session law compilation.)
2) We also have in Oregon, as do many states, an unofficial statutory compilation, the Oregon Revised Statutes Annotated, which is published by Thomson-Reuters (West Group).
Selected recent postings on this dispute, about which I posted here.
1) From ADF Alliance Alert: Oregon threatens over statutes copyright? (with a link to this post at The Volokh Conspiracy (and associated Comments)
2) J’s Scratchpad: James Grimmelman: Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: Old Problems and New Solutions
If you want to follow this story, here are direct links and suggested searches:
1) Further discussion of this topic can be found at Jack Bog’s Blog, see post and comments here: “Don’t you dare post Oregon laws on the internet!”
2) See also Loaded Orygun post, here.
The following represents my opinion, from my perspective as an Oregon public law librarian:
My previous posts on this subject are here and here and here.
I’ve been reading, among other things, the blog Comments about the Oregon Legislative Counsel “copyright” dispute and my reaction yesterday and still today is: we don’t have all the facts so please don’t jump to conclusions.
Oregon Legal Research Blog