61 Law and Contemporary Problems 1 and 2 (winter and spring 1998): a double issue emphasizing articles on federal government lawyers but containing many valuable articles for state government lawyers.

Avalon includes such documents as the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Magna Carta and the Northwest Ordinance.

Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England (University of Chicago Press, 1979). The treatise that early American lawyers read. The edition is a facsimile, which makes it more difficult to read.

Lovell, Colin, English Constitutional and Legal History (Oxford University Press, 1962). This is an excellent book. Although it is out of print, it is available from libraries and used book stores. For sources of used books, see Bookfinder.

Bailyn, Bernard, The Origins of American Politics (Vintage Books, 1967).

Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1967).

McDonald, Forrest, Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Kansas University Press, 1985).

Rakove, Jack N., Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (Vintage, 1996).

Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Norton, 1969).

Wood, Gordon, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1991).

Bailyn, Bernard (ed.), Debate on the Constitution (Library of America, 1993), two volumes.

Farrand, Max (ed.), Records of the Federal Constitution of 1787 (Yale University Press, 1986).

The Federalist Papers: available in many editions: one of the great American books.

Cogan, Neil H. (ed.), The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, & Origins (Oxford University Press, 1997).

There are two standard histories of American law. One is Friedman, Lawrence, A History of American Law (Touchstone, 1986). The other is a two-volume set: Horwitz, Morton, The Transformation of American Law 1780-1860 (Oxford University Press, 1979) and The Transformation of American Law 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 1994).

A handy source for both the text and an extremely well done document that annotates each portion as well as the amendments is available at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution/. A printed copy of that annotation as well as an update of it are available from the Government Printing Office.

The U. S. Code is available at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/uscode.html.

For pending federal legislation (as well as a wealth of other information) see Thomas at http://thomas.loc.gov/

The CFR is available at http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-search.html.

For United States Supreme Court cases on the internet see http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&navby=vol. Cases that are printed in volumes before 150 are available on that site if you know the name of one of the parties: use the search function.

The standard book on the subject is Tarr, G. Alan, Understanding State Constitutions (Princeton University Press, 1998), which includes a very large bibliography. Both the Rutgers Law Journal and Temple Law Review publish annual issues on state constitutions. Greenwood Press is publishing a series of reference guides to the state constitutions, and a list of those that are now in print is available at

State statutes are available through http://www.ncsl.org/public/leglinks.cfm. if you select the appropriate state. The general Internet sites, the site of your state bar and the site of your state legislature are also worth trying.

For state cases (for many states not a complete collection) see http://www.ncsl.org/public/leglinks.cfm. The general Internet sites, your state bar's site and your legislature's site are also worth trying.

The leading journal on statutory law is Statute Law Review, which Oxford University Press publishes. The authors of most of the articles are British, but it nevertheless is highly useful for drafters in this country because of the high quality of the articles. A subscription is expensive, but many law libraries have it, and the current issue is available at http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/list/stalaw/.

The standard treatise on statutory construction is Sutherland, J. B., Statutes and Statutory Construction (West Publishing Company, sixth edition updated by Norman J. Singer, 2000). For a historical view of the subject as well as an argument for a particular method of statutory construction see Popkin, William, Statutes in Court: the History and Theory of Statutory Interpretation (Duke University Press, 1999). For a drafter's view see Stark, Jack, "On Language Games and Statutory Interpretation: An Inside Narrative," Statute Law Review, 20, no. 2 (1999), 144-153.