West’s Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes Help

SOURCE:
This site contains both the consolidated and unconsolidated Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes and Constitution, as compiled and maintained by the editorial staff of Thomson Reuters, and made available here in an unannotated version under agreement with the Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau.

CONTENTS:
A document is a section of the statutes or section of an article of the Pennsylvania Constitution. A current-through line, appearing at the end of a document, tells you how current the document is.

Pennsylvania legislation has been partially "consolidated" (reorganized and recodified) as part of the program initiated by Act 1970, Nov. 25, P.L. 707, No. 230, as amended. Consequently, statutory sections are organized within either the original Purdon’s unconsolidated codification, abbreviated P.S., under numbers assigned by Thomson Reuters, or within the consolidated codification, abbreviated Pa.C.S.A., under number assigned legislatively.

The chronological history of each statutory section is "credited" following the text of each section. The abbreviation "P.L." stands for "Pamphlet Laws"; a term of art for the Commonwealth’s annual official compendium of Acts of the General Assembly, published as "Laws of Pennsylvania".

LEGAL NOTICES:
Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes is not an official publication of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Official Commonwealth publication of Pennsylvania laws can be found in Smith’s Laws of Pennsylvania (1700 through Nov. 30, 1801), Laws of Pennsylvania (Dec. 1, 1801 to date), and Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes.

Thomson Reuters is distributing this database to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered. However, this database was not necessarily prepared by persons licensed to practice law in a particular jurisdiction. Thomson Reuters is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice, and this database is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.

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Navigating Within this Site

The content included at this site is listed on the home page. Just select a link to view a list of relevant documents.

You can also search for statutes related to your issue.

Click Home at the top of any page to return to the home page at any time. To go to the Pennsylvania General Assembly site, click Pennsylvania General Assembly Home.

Note: Though court rules are listed in the Purdon’s Table of Contents, they are not accessible via this site. Refs & Annos documents, which contain references and annotations when viewed in Thomson Reuters Westlaw annotated statutes database, will display on this site as empty placeholder documents.

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Searching this Site

You can search this site using the Natural Language search method. Natural Language allows you to retrieve relevant documents by typing a description in plain English.

  1. Click Search at the top of any page. The Search page is displayed.
  2. Type a description of an issue or statute in plain English, up to 640 characters, or type a statute citation. For example, type
    quarantining dogs after biting
    "68 P.S. 250.101"
    "75 Pa.C.S.A. 3802"
  3. Click Search.

Note: Surrounding statute citations with quotation marks will improve your search result.

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Browsing Documents

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Retrieving Cited Documents

Westlaw, Thomson Reuters online legal research service, can be used to retrieve documents which are referred to in a Pennsylvania statute, such as federal statutes, but which are outside the scope of this site.

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Information on other Pennsylvania legal products is available at the Thomson Reuters Online Store.

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Questions and Suggestions

Thomson Reuters is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice, and this database is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.

Questions and suggestions concerning functionality of this site may be directed to the Thomson Reuters Westlaw Editorial Department by e-mail at [email protected]

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