Following each legislative session, people ask us where they can view signed copies of bills and how to find session law chapter numbers for bills that became law.

The information requested in both of these questions can be found on the Secretary of State's website. As bills that passed the Legislature are signed by the Governor, copies are filed with the Secretary of State's office, where they are scanned and made available online on the Bills and Resolutions page. Bills are listed by type and bill number range. Some bills are filed without the Governor's signature, and links to view these bills are included in the list. You can determine whether a bill that passed the Legislature was signed or filed without the Governor's signature by looking up the bill in the Texas Legislature Online. If the bill passed but was not signed, you will see the action "Filed without the Governor's signature."

The same page that contains links to signed copies also lists the session law chapter numbers that were assigned to each bill. The session laws constitute a complete set of all bills passed into law during a particular legislative session. Chapter numbers are used primarily for citing a bill in a legislative history annotation. The Library's bill-chapter cross reference table, which allows you to search chapter numbers and their corresponding bill numbers back to the 19th Legislature, will be updated with 82nd R.S. bills once all chapter numbers have been assigned.

This entry was posted on June 28, 2011 at 11:15 AM and has received 2633 views. Print this entry.