Florida Statutes in United States

Florida Statutes

Note: Whenever possible, contributors to this Wiki Encyclopedia of Law should cite to the official codification of any State law, in this case the State Statutes.

Authority

The official codification of Florida law is the Florida Statutes. For laws that are not available in the official code, or when desired for clarity or adoption reference, cite in accordance
with Rule 9.800, Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure. Since 1999 the Florida Statutes have been published in their entirety annually.

Before then they were published bi-annually following each odd-year regular session and a supplement was published following each even-year regular session.

Chapters

A chapter in the Florida Statutes represents all of the relevant statutory law on a particular subject. While the legislature may create specific chapters, the legislature’s Division of Statutory Revision has the final authority to determine where the legislation will be codified.

This is why some laws do not appear in the statutes where the bill identifies their placement. A detailed explanation of the codification procedure can be found in the beginning of any volume of the Florida Statutes. A chapter in the Florida Statutes is not a session law chapter.

Sections

Sections of the Florida Statutes represent a further subdivision of each chapter. The legislature’s Division of Statutory Revision has the final authority over the location of the sections within the chapters.

The Division provides numerous cross-reference tables in each volume of the statutes. A section in the Florida Statutes is not a session law section.

Name of a Statute

A statute has a name only if there is a specific statement to that effect in the statute itself.

Do not confuse names of statutes with titles of acts. Often the official name of the statute is the same as that for the act and is found in the section of the statute referring to “Short Title.”

Florida Session laws

Bills that have passed the Florida Legislature and become law are reproduced in their entirety in the session laws. A session law’s section numbers will be identical to those that appeared in the bill.

The statutes are the selected reproduction of the portions of each session law that have general applicability. For example, the title of the bill and the “Whereas” clauses that appear at the beginning of a bill are not reproduced in the statutes, but they do appear in the session laws, and they are sometimes used by the courts to determine the
legislative intent of the act.

The Florida Constitution (in Article III, section 9) provides that when the legislature enacts a law without an effective date, the law goes into effect on the sixtieth day after adjournment sine die of the session of the legislature in which the law was enacted. In such cases, as well as when major provisions within the same law have differing effective dates, the identification form should be omitted. Legal documents should only indicate the official or popular name of the law.

Session law Chapter Numbers
Session law chapter numbers appear at the head of each bill approved by the legislature, signed by the Governor, and filed with the secretary of state. The secretary of state assigns these numbers in the order the acts are filed with the office. The first two digits of the chapter number represent the year of the legislation; the numbers after the hyphen indicate the numerical order in which the acts appear in the session laws. The numbers assigned in the session laws differ from those assigned in the Florida Statutes. Note that before 1957, the secretary of state used a different numbering system that numbered
all session laws from the nineteenth century until 1956 in a consecutive numbering system.

Session law Section Numbers

There are two types of section numbers: those in the Florida Statutes, and those in the Laws of Florida. Each act begins with section one and is numbered consecutively throughout.

Sometimes the act does not contain the intended location of codification in the Florida
Statutes. For example, in the Laws of Florida, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act was divided into ten sections. After becoming a law, it was codified at sections 688.001-.009, Florida Statutes, but the location in the statutes was not established by the enactment.

More frequently, each act also contains the intended location of codification in the Florida Statutes. For example, chapter 88-337, Laws of Florida, created the Family Policy Act. It provided as follows: Section 13. Section 39.403, Florida Statutes, is amended to read: . .