The Texas Legislature meets every two years on odd-numbered years. During the legislative session, hundreds of bills are introduced by legislators for consideration.

Bills that become law are arranged by subject matter into various codes such as the Election Code, Family Code, and Penal Code. These statutes are published online by the Texas Legislative Council. They are also available in print from private publishers.

The legislature also meets when the Texas governor calls a special session. During a special session, the Texas Constitution states that “there shall be no legislation upon subjects other than those” set forth in the governor's proclamation or otherwise presented to the legislature by the governor.

The Texas statutes are available online.

While there is no official publisher of the Texas statutes, Vernon's Texas Statutes and Codes Annotated is the most popular and widely accepted version. Vernon's includes helpful annotations to case law, prior versions of the law, and other secondary sources.

Our library has print copies of Vernon's, and it is also available at many law libraries across Texas.

To learn more, see The Legislative Process in Texas from the Texas Legislative Council.

Our library's digitization efforts have brought online over 100 years of historical Texas statutes! We are proud to provide free public access to digitized copies of the Texas statutes from 1879 through 1984.

*There is no free, public source on the web for codified Texas statutes in effect between the last volume on our historical Texas statutes page and 2004. For these intervening years, the Legislative Reference Library's Legislative Archive system provides access to the session laws.

Our library has an extensive print collection of historical Texas statutes, and we make these available to the public during our normal business hours. If you cannot visit the library in person, Ask a Librarian for assistance.

Visit our Historical Texas Statutes guide to learn about and access historical statutes.