A constitution establishes the system of government and governmental authority. All other sources of law, such as statutes, court opinions, and regulations must comply with the constitution.
The current Iowa Constitution was adopted in 1857.
After an Iowa General Assembly session, all enacted laws are published in the order in which they passed as "session laws" in Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly. All laws of both permanent and temporary nature, as well as joint resolutions, are published in these volumes.
Session laws are typically consulted in research if the law has not yet been codified, when you are tracing the history of a statutory provision, and if you need to see a single law in its entirety.
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The Code of Iowa (published by the Legislative Services Agency) is the official compilation of all the general and permanent laws of Iowa. It is organized into subjects arranged by chapter number. The first Iowa Code was published in 1851. Codes are currently published biennially in odd-numbered years. The 1979 - 2011 codes were kept up to date by a print supplement issued in even-numbered years. Starting with the 2013 Code, that supplement is no longer available in print but integrated into a PDF version of the code, available from the Iowa General Assembly site.
Like the Code of Iowa, the Iowa Code Annotated (West) includes the text of the statutes. In addition, the Iowa Code Annotated offers extended references to the history of the statute, as well as law review commentaries, notes on decisions (references to court cases that have interpreted or construed the statute), cross references to related statutes, library references to secondary materials, and other helpful information. The Iowa Code Annotated is kept up to date by pocket parts and/or supplements and the Iowa Legislative Service (West).
Codes are the most common starting point for statutory research since they integrate the provisions from multiple laws on a particular topic. Their wide variety of finding aids, from indexes to popular name tables, also make codes useful.
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