The closest Texas has to an official code of Texas statutes is Vernon's Texas Statutes and Codes Annotated, a black set of volumes commonly referred to as simply "Vernon's." It is published by West, now a part of Thomson Reuters, but is still known by the name of original publisher. (Despite the Texas Constitution of 1876 requiring the legislature to publish the laws of the state, there is no official state code and the legislature has instead relied on Vernon's, making it quasi-official.) Like the federal United States Code, the general goal is to provide a subject arrangement of general and permanent laws. (Thus, Vernon's does not include all "special" laws from session laws nor does it include temporary legislation, such as appropriations.)
Vernon's currently has four parts:
Most statutes are now found in the main subset, Vernon's Texas Codes Annotated (VTCA), a topical arrangement of statutes into subject matter codes. The Civil Statutes and Code of Criminal Procedure will eventually be part of VTCA as the Texas Legislative Council (TLC) is still carrying out a complete, nonsubstantive revision of the Texas statutes--a huge housekeeping project first begun in 1963. (More info can be found from the TLC's Drafting Manual, p. 158.) The Special District Local Laws Code is basically a bonus part as it compiles session laws that are not general enough in nature to be in the code ordinarily. Vernon's/Westlaw also includes the Texas Constitution, but Lexis has it in a separate database.
Vernon's Texas Rules Annotated (containing rules of civil procedures, evidence, and appellate procedure) is a separate publication promulgated by Texas courts rather than the legislature; in print, it is shelved separately and on Westlaw it is at end of table of contents of Vernon's database.
By this point in your research, you may already have citations to Texas statutes from secondary sources. If that is the case, you will want to look those statutes up in an annotated code. Whatever the case though, you should check Texas statutes directly to confirm that you have assembled all the relevant Texas statutes or to confirm that your question does not involve Texas statutory law.
You can find Texas statutes in print and online. The print version, known as Vernon's, is annotated.
There are three main online options:
Bloomberg Law offers Texas statutes, but has not yet expanded its state statute "Smart Code" citator to include Texas. (The Texas State Law Library has digitized historic sets from 1879 through 1984.)
Order of statute types differs between versions, so initial browsing of the set you are using can be helpful to understand that particular resource's organization. For example:
NB: Special District Local Laws Code is listed alphabetically within annotated codes in print and online; print set however is softbound.
Overview
There are different methods for finding relevant statutes:
In general, using print is a four-step process:
Alternatively, you can use the Popular Name Table, located in the last volume of the General Index; use this table to find the title and section number where a law passed by the legislature was codified (e.g., Deceptive Trade Practices Act). Note that each subject-matter code also contains its own index located in its last volume, which is also updated annually by pocket part.
For additional case law beyond the annotations in print and to see whether a statute is still good law, one must check Lexis' Shepard's or Westlaw's KeyCite.
Online
Lexis and Westlaw both provide annotated versions that include relevant case law and secondary sources. KeyCite (Westlaw) and Shepard’s (Lexis) may lead to cases and other materials not listed in the statute’s annotations and indicate whether the statute is still good law. For historic coverage:
The Texas Legislature also provides an unofficial, unannotated version online. This version is free and can be used either by browsing individual subject-matter codes or performing a basic keyword search.
Derivation/Disposition Tables
Because of Texas' revision process, you may need to work backward from a current statutory citation to an earlier one or work forward from an old statutory citation to a current one. The need may arise when doing legislative history research or when seeking Notes of Decisions that were not carried over from predecessor statutes.
If you are researching a law old enough to have been recodified and are trying to find an earlier citation from the current citation, turn to the derivation table or "Prior Laws" info following the statutory text of a given section. (N.B. "Prior Laws" annotations only exist for code sections that are old enough to have been recodified. "Prior Laws" info actually includes more information than what is in derivation table--it lists session laws and earlier code citations, with last line noting final location in Vernon's prior to recodification.) If working from an old citation and you want to find the current citation, after recodification, look for a disposition table.
Print:
Online:
As with statutory research generally, researching Texas statutes in print can be easier than searching online. Browsing the appropriate volume in print can help to familiarize a researcher with the basic structure and organization of that code, and the index is easier to use in print than it is online. Print however is not as current as Lexis or Westlaw and one must still go online to check a citator, Lexis' Shepard's and/or Westlaw's KeyCite.
Lexis and Westlaw feature several useful search functions that are unique to those online databases, but it can be hard sometimes to see the forest for the trees. Westlaw generally offers more thorough annotations than Lexis. The other online option from the Texas Legislature is free, but it has some notable weaknesses. For example, its search function has limited terms and connectors searching (e.g., no proximity searching). And, unlike Westlaw, the Legislature does not include a topical index; there can also be a considerable time lag to its currency after a legislative session.