How to Find and Cite Alabama Law

Alabama retired its 1901 constitution in November 2022 and left the underlying law untouched. What it changed was the numbering, and an old section reference can now send you into a document the state has replaced.

The Fair Ballot Commission statement, approved under Ala. Code 1975 § 17-6-81 and printed on the sample ballot, spelled out the deal in advance. The 1901 document had been amended nearly a thousand times. Its replacement would do five things and nothing else. Rearrange the text so similar subjects sit together. Remove racist language. Delete repeated or repealed portions. Gather the economic development amendments in one place. Arrange local amendments by county. No other changes, and no changes relating to taxes.

Voters authorised the exercise through Amendment 951 on 3 November 2020. The Legislature approved the committee's draft in Act 2022-111 and put it to the state on 8 November 2022.

Local law now reads like a grid

The statewide half barely moved, still Articles I through XVIII, running from section 1 to section 287 with decimal sections wedged in where newer material landed.

The local half was rebuilt from scratch. Local Provisions opens with Title 1 Autauga County, then Title 2 Baldwin County, then Title 3 Barbour County, straight down the alphabet. Inside every county the chapter numbers mean the same thing. Chapter 2 is Courts, 4 is Economic and Industrial Development, 8 is Officials and Employees, 10 is Taxation, 11 is Zoning, Planning and Utilities. Counties that never got an amendment on a subject carry that chapter anyway, marked Reserved. Municipal amendments hang off a lettered title, so Baldwin County sits in Title 2 and Bay Minette sits in Title 2A.

Which means you can read § 2-11.40 before you open it. Baldwin County, zoning and planning, item forty. It turns out to be an annexation provision.

The cost is that the old amendment numbers are gone. The Legislature published a disposition table with the draft, mapping old to new. Keep it open if your source predates the switch.

Who puts out what

The Code of Alabama 1975 is compiled by the Legislative Services Agency's Legal Division together with the Code Commissioner. Section 29-5A-22 says they may not alter the sense, meaning, or effect of any act, then hands them a long list of things they may do anyway, including renumbering, rearranging hierarchy units, fixing grammar, and reconciling two acts from one session that hit the same section without contradicting each other.

The same Legal Division runs the Alabama Administrative Code under section 41-22-7 and publishes a monthly bulletin, the Alabama Administrative Monthly. So in Alabama the legislature's own staff publish the executive branch's rules.

Each agency also keeps its own separate register, which section 41-22-7(a) names as The (name of the agency) Administrative Code.

Citation forms

Alabama's appellate courts put the section first and the code's name after it. The Supreme Court of Alabama, in White-Spunner Construction, Inc. v. Construction Completion Co., 103 So. 3d 781 (Ala. 2012), cites a bond requirement as § 39-1-1(a), Ala. Code 1975. That 1975 is part of the code's name, not an edition year, so it stays 1975 whether the text dates from 1978 or last spring.

Rule 28(a)(10) of the Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure lets a brief follow either of the two national citation manuals it names, or the style and form used in opinions of the Supreme Court of Alabama. That last option is what keeps the section-first habit alive.

Rule numbers run on a grid. The Legislative Services Agency drafting manual sets a uniform numbering system in Chapter 10-1-6. Each rulemaking agency gets a control number, then a division number, then a chapter number, then the rule after a period. If the agency has no divisions, an X goes in the division slot. So 230-X-1-.27 is agency 230, no divisions, chapter 1, rule .27, and the X is a placeholder standing for nothing at all. Would you have guessed that from looking at it?

And because every agency has a code of its own, the court names the agency inside the citation. The same opinion writes it as Ala. Admin. Code (Licensing Board for General Contractors), Regulation 230-X-1-.27.

The opinions are the unusual part

Alabama's corpus holds 11,928 attorney general opinions against 18,864 rule sections. That is nearly two thirds as many opinions as there are rules.

Section 36-15-1 sets out who may ask. The Governor and a list of named state officers, plus judges of probate, circuit clerks, sheriffs, boards of education, county commissions, mayors, city councils, and any other officer required to handle or account for public funds. A governing body has to send a resolution with the request. Moot, private and personal questions are out, and so is anything already in litigation.

Section 36-15-19 is why the pile is worth reading. A written opinion, secured by someone legally entitled to secure it, shall protect that officer and the members of that board from liability to either the state, county or other municipal subdivisions of the state because of any official act performed as directed or advised in the opinion.

Now read the edges. The shield covers the officer the opinion was directed to or secured for. It runs against the state, a county, or a municipal subdivision, and it says nothing about a private plaintiff suing you. The statute never uses the phrase good faith, so the question is whether the act matched the advice, not whether you meant well. Opinions are numbered by year and sequence, in the shape 2024-0012.

Rules that are in force and not in the code

Section 41-22-7(b) lets an agency leave out of its administrative code any rule that is general in form but applies to only one county or part of one. Leaving it out, the statute says, does not affect its validity or effectiveness. The omitted rules stay on file with the agency secretary, and an index has to be published at least once a year. On a county matter, that index is a stop on the route.

The trap runs the other way too. Under section 41-22-6(b), a rule that misses its filing deadline with the Legal Division is invalid, however carefully the agency adopted it.

The counts

Alabama's statute corpus runs to 46,617 sections, with 42,510 in force and 4,093 marked reserved. The rule corpus is 18,864 sections, 15,337 of them in force and 3,267 repealed. Add 870 court rules, 381 constitution sections and 207 agency guidance documents and the whole thing comes to 78,867.

What will bite you

Anything cited to the 1901 constitution needs that disposition table before you trust the number. The X in a rule number is telling you nothing, and the 1975 in a statute cite is a name and not a date. If a county rule looks absent from the code, check the annual index of omitted rules first. And treat an attorney general opinion as heavier than the word advisory suggests, because for the official who asked for it, it is.

Facts used

All Alabama corpus counts below are from Vaquill AI's US primary law data, measured 2026-09-18.

Priyansh Khodiyar

Co-Founder & CTO

Priyansh leads engineering and AI at Vaquill, from the matter workbench to drafting, document comparison, document matrix, and citation-verified research.