Florida in the United States

Florida Legal Materials

The Florida Constitution, statutes, bills and other legislative materials are posted on the the Florida Legislature’s Online Sunshine site. For House bills, bill status and related Documents, use the Florida Senate and Florida House of Representatives websites. The Florida Administrative Code and the Administrative Code Weekly are posted by the Florida Department of State. Recent Supreme Court opinions are posted byFindLaw back to 1997. You can find Internet links to more Florida primary legal materials and government agencies through FindLaw.

In addition, primary legal materials are available from Lexis, Westlaw and LOIS.Fastcase has the Florida statutory code. Fastcase, Google Scholar and Versuslawhave cases from 1950. Supreme and appellate court cases are reported in West’sSouthern Reporter.

To check on the status of pending litigation call the Offices of Legislative Services at 1-800-342-1827 in state or 850-488-4371 out of state.

Florida session laws are available back to 1822 from the State Library And Archives of Florida. They are also available on The subscription-based Digital Session Laws Collection on HeinOnline.

For briefs — Florida Supreme Court Briefs and Opinions are posted free back to 1846. Alternatively, you can order copies of briefs from cases with published opinions back to the early 1960s from several Florida law school libraries, including FSU (850-644-4095) and Stetson (813-562-7820 or 7821).

For questions about Florida legal materials, copies and/or inter-library loans, try calling the University of Florida College of Law Lawton Chiles Legal Information Center (Reference: 352-273-0723; Main: 352-273-0700) or the Florida State University Law Research Center in Tallahassee, which has a friendly document delivery service (850-644-4095) and/or the Dolly and Homer Hand Law Library at Stetson University College of Law (phone 813-562-7820 or 7821). Alternatively, check out Girtman’s Compendium of Federal and Florida Case Law: Where to Find it and How to Cite It. The University of Florida’s Legal Information Center posts guides for researching Florida cases, laws and regulations.

Attorneys: You can find out if an attorney is licensed to practice in Florida using the Florida Bar’s Member Search. The Member Search will give you the attorney’s disciplinary history going back 10 years. To go back farther, call the Legal Division of the Florida State Bar at 850-561-5839.

Docket Sheets And Case Information: Links to docket databases for most Florida courts are available at Legaldockets.com. For an overview of the structure of Florida courts see here. The Florida Courts website includes statistics on Florida courts.

Historical Administrative Law Materials: Florida administrative law materials (including decisions) are available from the Florida Administrative Law Report (352-375-8036) which, in addition to being the official reporter for most Florida administrative agencies, has a research service (that principally searches their administrative law-related databases).

Jury Instructions: The Florida Supreme Court posts Standard Jury Instructions forCivil, Criminal, and Contract & Business. They are also available on Westlaw (FLA-JICIV or FLA-JICRIM).

Land Records: You can look up Florida real estate records using the Official records database posted by the relevant Clerk of the Circuit Court. Often it helps to search the relevant County Property Appraiser’s database first. If you don’t know the county, you can try a commercial public records vendor like TLO, Accurint Lexis or one of the other sources listed in the “Land Records” and “Title Searches” sections of the Real Estateentry.

Legislative History: For information about Florida legislative history, see the Florida Legislative History and/or the chapter on Florida in Legislative Intent Research: A 50-State Guide, published by the National Conference of State Legislatures. One of the key documents in a Florida legislative history is the staff analysis. These are available back to 1998 from the Florida Senate Website Archive (first select your bill and then follow the links to the staff analysis).

To get Florida legislative history materials, call a good document retrieval service. I’ve had good results from Florida Information Associates (850-878-0188). One of their researchers, Connie Beane, is extremely knowledgeable. Alternatively, you can call the Florida Legislative History Research Service (850-878-0188), which also compiles legislative histories — but you must supply the session laws you want, and they don’t know anything about the laws themselves, they just know how and where to get the materials. For other services, see “Document Retrieval Services.”

Legal Encyclopedias: Florida Jurisprudence is available on Westlaw (FLJUR) andLexis (FLA;FLJUR). In addition, Lexis has a number of online Florida practice treatises. For elements of common actions, see Florida Causes of Action (James Publishing).

Note: We linked the resources to archive.org in an effort to decrease the number of broken links cited.

For more primary law resources, see …

Topics Covered by the Florida Legal Encyclopedia

Note: More detailed information about this State is provided in the Florida jurisdictional legal Encyclopedia, which tie together Florida statutory and case law.

Topics include:

Florida Statutes
Florida Constitution
Cases & Case Law
Florida Legal Websites
FL State Government Info
Florida Counties
Florida Cities
Florida Legislation
Florida Media Sources
FL Court Reporters/Depositions
Florida Legal Forms
Florida Courts
Florida Local Court Rules
FL State Bar/Legal Associations
Florida Law Enforcement

Race Riot of 1923 in Rosewood (Florida) in relation to Crime and Race

Race Riot of 1923 in Rosewood (Florida) is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Over the course of 6 days in January of 1923, the predominantly Black town of Rosewood, Florida, was mobbed by Whites from surrounding areas, and the entire town was burned to the ground. In February of that year a grand jury found insufficient evidence to prosecute, and the truth behind this atrocity lay dormant for decades. Finally, in the early 1990s there was an attempt to retrieve the truth. Many of the recorded stories are conflicting; the anecdotal accounts of White individuals differ from the accounts of Black individuals, but some facts have been established. In 1994, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles signed legislation that would compensate Black victims and their families for past racial violence. This section examines the history of the incident at Rosewood, and then, Rosewood’s renewed significance in a more recent public policy decision in the state of Florida.

Resources

Notes and References

Entry about Race Riot of 1923 in Rosewood (Florida) in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

Finding the law: Florida in the U.S. Code

A collection of general and permanent laws relating to florida, passed by the United States Congress, are organized by subject matter arrangements in the United States Code (U.S.C.; this label examines florida topics), to make them easy to use (usually, organized by legal areas into Titles, Chapters and Sections). The platform provides introductory material to the U.S. Code, and cross references to case law. View the U.S. Code’s table of contents here.

Florida