Organization

The Oklahoma State Legislature is a bicameral body composed of a Senate and a House.  Senate members serve four-year terms while House members serve two-year terms.  There are 48 senators and 101 representatives.  They are in session each year from February until May.

Law

The legislature creates law in the form of statutes.  These statutes, or Acts, are published as session laws at the close of each legislative session.  They are also codified, or organized by subject.  Typically, researchers use a codified version of the statutes to research statutory law.  Statutory codes are a subject organization of statute in-force at the time the code is compiled.  Codes can either be unannotated or annotated.  An annotated code contains references to cases, regulations, and legal commentary relevant to the particular code section being examined.  Legal researchers should use an annotated code for their legal research.  

Publications

The official state code, Oklahoma Statutes, is published under the direction of the Oklahoma Supreme Court Justices.  These volumes contain the text of all the state statutes in force, with historical notes following each statute section.  West / Thomson Reuters publishes the official editions of the Oklahoma statutes in hardbound volumes that are updated each year supplement volumes.  Tables and Index volumes are included in the official edition.  The spine of each volume indicates the title or titles contained in that volume.

For legal research purposes, the commercial version of the statutes, the Oklahoma Statutes Annotated, offers useful features not found in the official Oklahoma Statutes.  The annotated statutes not only contain the same text of the statutes in force, with historical notes following each statute section, but also include library references, cross-references, and very useful case annotations.  Tables volumes and softbound Index volumes are included with this set.        

For more information about researching Oklahoma statutes and a complete list of Oklahoma statutes sources, visit the Oklahoma Statutes Research Guide.