« Ind. Decisions - Upcoming oral arguments this week | Main | Environment - "A century's worth of mud dredged from five miles of the Grand Calumet River lies buried" in a nearby CAMU »

Monday, May 12, 2008

Ind. Law - How much can you rely on what is in the Indiana Code?

In 2006 I wrote in an article for Res Gestae that the online version of the Indiana Code, which is the only version immediately accessible to most users, has numerous failings. Among these are the failure to include any editorial materials, the presence of numerous obvious errors, the fact that for part of each year the online Code is not current, and the fact that prior versions of the Code are not retained online and are very difficult to access elsewhere. (Access the 2006 article here.)

In a 2007 Res Gestae article I wrote that the online Indiana Code currently meets none of the requirements for trustworthy state-level primary legal resources on the Web: (Are they official? Are they authentic? Are they permanently accessible? Are they secure?) Yet most users of the Indiana Code are unaware of this, and consider the online Indiana Code to be trustworthy. (Access the 2007 article here.)

The May 2008 issue of Res Gestae will publish my newest article, "How much can you rely on what is in the Indiana Code? Part I - Noncode sections"

The problems outlined in the 2006 and 2007 articles are peculiar to the online version of the Indiana Code. This new article looks at problems that transcend the medium used for publication – these new, insofar as these discussions are concerned, problems exist with both the online and the printed versions of the Indiana Code. This article will suggest to the Indiana attorney that:

(1) Simply finding a provision in the Indiana Code is not enough. Due diligence may require you to, at a minimum, study the provision's history in an annotated version of the Indiana Code, or look back to the original enrolled acts. This is the subject of Part I.

(2) In certain areas of the law, the Indiana Code no longer may be relied upon for all the substantive law of the State on a particular topic. You will need to look elsewhere, and it may not be easy. This will be the subject of Part II.

Res Gestae has given me permission to post this draft version of Part I on the web, prior to official publication. If you have thoughts, concerns, examples, questions, objections, after reading Part I, please let me know. Where appropriate, I hope to address them in Part II.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 12, 2008 08:35 AM
Posted to Indiana Law