What is Statutory History?
The legislature enacts laws in chronological order, which makes it difficult to determine what the law is on a specific topic at a given point in time. For that reason, the laws enacted by the legislature, called session laws or chapter laws, are codified into statutes, which are a subject arrangement of the law. A statute may be affected by numerous session laws. Legislative history is the compilation of the actions and documents related to a single session law. A statutory history addresses the changes to a statute (or statutes) over time. Statutory histories can span decades or even centuries and may consist of multiple individual legislative histories.
What is the Statutory History Table?
Doing statutory history research can be tedious and time consuming if you have to look up every session law that amends a statute. The Statutory History Table provides at-a-glance, online access to each act that affected a statute. For many acts, the Statutory History Table also provides a link directly to the act’s legislative history.
What is the coverage of the Statutory History Table?
The Statutory History Table contains acts from 1965 to present. It covers only those session laws enacted since the current revision of the Maine Revised Statutes. Online legislative histories are available for bills from the 110th Legislature (1981-1982) to present.
Where does the information come from?
The starting point is the Cross Reference Table published with each session of the Laws of Maine.
How is it arranged?
The Statutory History Table is divided by title, section, subsection, and paragraph, respectively.
What are the links and page numbers?
The links to "Law Chapter" will open the session law that enacted, amended, or repealed the statute. The "Law Section" gives the specific section of the session law that affected the statute ("Page (in Law)" tells you which page it's on). Where two pages are listed, the first page is the session law section that includes the enacting or amending clause, and the second page number is where the change is made. The links in the "Bill" column connect to the individual legislative histories of the related session law. Starting in 2021, page numbers are no longer included.
What sorts of changes are reflected?
The nature of the statutory change is briefly indicated in the "Effect" column. Most of the descriptions are self-explanatory. The changes marked "affected by" are more general and may include language affecting effective date, terms of application, conditions, contingencies, retroactivity and other considerations. "Affected by" provisions should always be researched carefully to determine the impact on the statutory change in question. Revision clauses, used when a bill changes the name of a state agency or other entity or changes the proper name of a code of act throughout the entire Maine Revised Statutes, are not included in the Statutory History Table.
What if I have further questions?
Contact the Law and Legislative Reference Library via their "Ask A Law Librarian" web form.
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