IN THE STACKS

New statutory law enacted by the Legislature can be found in Purdon’s Pennsylvania Legislative Service or the annual, official chronological Laws of Pennsylvania. The former is published irregularly three to eight times a year. The publication updates the Purdon’s Statutes pocket parts and is then updated into the annual pocket parts. For current legislation, visit the General Assembly’s Electronic Bill Room at http://www.legis.state.pa.us.



Two handy single volumes are Bisel’s Criminal Lawsource written by and West’s Criminal Law written by Dauphin County Common Pleas President Judge Joseph Kleinfelter. These texts contain Title 18 and other related titles and rules of criminal procedure from Purdon’s Statutes.



For legislative history of various acts, including debate content, one must consult the Legislative Journals. Jenkins Law Library has started a Web site for Pennsylvania laws at http://www.jenkinslaw.org



For constitutional law research, especially Article I research, the annotated edition of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1968 is found in Purdon’s Statutes. Any lawyer doing research in constitutional law should be aware of the four-prong test issued by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 586 A.2d 887 (Pa. 1991).



Court cases can be found in both appellate and county court publications. Appellate cases are available in the West’s Atlantic Reporter 2d series, or the abridged West’s Pennsylvania Reporter.



The state Supreme Court still publishes its Pennsylvania State Reports as the official court reporter, but Superior Court ended its official reports three years ago. Pennsylvania District & County Reports (D. & C.) or the individual county reports provide local opinions.



The appellate decisions have been online since 1998 at www.aopc.org with cases arranged chronologically as published. The D. & C. Series is available through American Lawyer Media, Westlaw and Lexis.



Some counties have their cases online at the local bar association site. Newspaper coverage of court cases can be found in Pennsylvania Law Weekly, The Legal Intelligencer, the Western Pennsylvania Legal Intelligencer and Lawyers Journal (published by the Allegheny County Bar Association).



Finally, George T. Bisel Co. publishes Bisel’s PA Criminal Law Update monthly to keep practitioners current on criminal law cases.

Locating Rules of Criminal Procedure

Court rules dealing with the Rules of Criminal Procedure can be found either in Pennsylvania Rules of Court: State (West) or Commonwealth Court Rules (American Lawyer Media).



Another source for an unannotated version is title 234 of the Pennsylvania Code. Since the Code is updated monthly, new rules will be made available in the Code after its publication in the weekly Pennsylvania Bulletin. Both the Code and Bulletin are available on the Internet at www.pacode.com and www.pabulletin .com, respectively.



In Purdon’s Statutes, the annotated Rules of Criminal Procedure can be found in two bound volumes after the statutory law of title 42.



For local court rules, go to each county’s rules or access many of the counties in the new West’s Pennsylvania Local Rules, Central or Western Region. For the eastern counties, like Philadelphia and Delaware, American Lawyer Media offers annual publications (as well as for some other counties like Allegheny and Washington).



The Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts has scanned many of the local court rules in its web site, http://www.aopc.org, but how current the rules are is suspect. Local rules have to be published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin before they can go into effect, but they do not appear in the Pennsylvania Code. The online service, www.pabulletin.com provides court rules back to 1996.



West’s Pennsylvania Digest 2d series is the main digest for Pennsylvania law. In its general outline of the law, “crimes” has 45 digest topics from the broad “criminal law” topic to specific crimes like “arson,” “bigamy,” etc.



A topic-specific digest is William Paton’s Criminal Trial Manual—Pennsylvania (Hanford Publishing Co.). This two-volume work is updated bimonthly. Its major categories of digested cases are arrests and detentions, constitutional rights, crimes, defenses, evidence, procedure and miscellaneous topics. The author provides longer digests than the West series.



Citators like Shepard’s Pennsylvania Citations (bound or electronic volumes) and West’s Keycite can provide citation checking for case, constitution and statutory law, and court rules. Shepard’s also has Philadelphia and Allegheny County local rules.

Sources for Jury Instructions