Nevada Supreme Court Law Library: 50-State Surveys

You can find information about different state laws using surveys. Here are some tools that can help:

• Westlaw Precision: This tool has surveys on many legal topics to help you start your research or make your own survey.
• National Survey of State Laws: This gives a summary of big legal topics across states.
• National Conference of State Legislatures: This website tracks bills and shows their progress.
• HeinOnline: This has surveys about state laws and is available on the Law Library’s website.
• American Law Reports: This offers detailed surveys on court cases.
• MapEngine: The Law Library uses this tool to make maps that show how laws are different in each state.
   

This guide will assist you in comparing state laws' differences. To assist you with your research, there are many sources of 50-State surveys, both statutory and regulatory, that may be used as a starting point. 

The National Survey of State Laws, 9th edition (2022), by Nebraska College of Law Librarian Richard A. Leiter, provides an overview of legal topics in the United States. It is available in print in the law library or onsite at the law library via a digital version through HeinOnline. Surveys are organized under these broad topics:

• Business and Consumer Laws
• Criminal Laws
• Education Laws
• Employment Laws
• Family Laws
• General Civil Laws
• Real Estate Laws
• Tax Laws

Find the most comprehensive and complete 50-state information in NCSL's 50-State searchable Bill Tracking Database.

Select a topic from the list find complete bill information. The status of bills listed in these databases is updated every week. Search by subtopics, year, status (e.g., pending, enacted, to governor, etc.) or enter keywords to identify bills.

If your issue of interest is not listed, enter topic terms in the white search box on any NCSL webpage for additional resources.

Subject Compilations of State Laws (1960-current) identifies hundreds of 50-state law surveys. Records contain annotations linking directly to articles & other documents residing in HeinOnline or freely accessible web resources..

• Every survey has been assigned to one or more pre-defined subject headings. Selecting a subject heading will retrieve all surveys that have that subject heading.

• NOTE: The older the survey, the greater the likelihood the law has changed and is no longer relevant. Conversely, the statutes may still be in effect, but their citations/codification may have changed over the years.

The American Law Reports (ALR) is a print resource available in the Law Library in Carson City and onsite via Westlaw.

ALR articles are intended to be an exhaustive survey of laws across jurisdictions on a very narrow issue. The author of an article selects one representative case as the basis of the article, and then proceeds to provide citations to every other similar case in every jurisdiction within which there is a published judicial opinion.

Articles are usually non-statutory in subject matter for state-law issues, but federal law articles frequently focus on interpretations of federal statutes across federal jurisdictions.

If searching on Westlaw, make use of the advanced search option (after first limiting your search to ONLY American Law Reports). Specifically, search for your terms only in the title field as a first search. For example, if you were looking for an article covering other states' laws on covenants not to compete, you might enter a search such as:

ti(covenant /3 compete)

This query will search only the title of ALR articles that contain the word compete within 3 words (either before or after) of covenant. 

For a list of Model Acts, please visit the Uniform Law Commission (formerly knows as NCCUSL). 

The Uniform Laws Annotated (ULA) is published by Thomson Reuters/West. It is available in print in the Law Library as well as onsite via Westlaw.

For more information, please visit the law library's guide on Uniform & Model Laws. 

To access the Lexis+ State Law Comparison Tool, begin by selecting Practical Guidance.

Then, follow these steps:

1. Select a Practice Area and Topic
2. Select Jurisdictions
3. Select Question(s) 
4. Download the report in MS Excel, MS Word, or PDF.

The following example compares California and Nevada Statute of Limitations for an Action based on Contract and When Does it Begin to Run?

Bloomberg Law offers hundreds of topics in their State Law Chart Builder. Begin by selecting Practitioner Tools, Chart Builders.

Then, select from a list of over 100 topics.

Here is an example of a Property Tax Overview Chart comparing California and Nevada: