How to Find and Cite Maryland Law

Maryland's code has no title numbers in it. Every citation names a subject instead, and the same section number shows up in article after article, so a cite that drops the subject usually still resolves. Just to the wrong law.

Try it. Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101 is the three-year limitations period for civil actions. Md. Code Ann., Crim. Law § 5-101 is the definitions section for controlled dangerous substances. Same number, both real, no overlap in meaning. If someone forwards you "section 5-101" with no article attached, you have nothing.

That's the whole shape of Maryland research. The subject name is the address. The number is just the apartment.

Thirty-six articles, and how they got that way

Before 1973 Maryland did use numbered articles, running alphabetically by topic. Article 27 was Crimes and Punishments. Article 2B was Alcoholic Beverages. As the state kept adding subjects it kept bolting letters onto numbers, and the arrangement stopped being usable.

So a commission was appointed in 1970 to rewrite the whole thing by subject. The first revised articles were enacted in 1973, and the work ran for four decades. Chapter 26 of the 2002 session moved most of Article 27 into the new Criminal Law Article. The last holdout, Article 2B, became the Alcoholic Beverages Article in 2016, and by the close of the 2017 session everything had been recodified. The named article has since picked up cannabis and is now Alcoholic Beverages and Cannabis.

So why does a finished project still cost you time? Because Maryland opinions written before the switch cite the old numbers, and those citations are all over the case law you'll actually read. An opinion citing Art. 27, § 286 isn't defective. It's pointing at an article that was repealed out from under it. You need the revisor's cross-reference tables to land on the current section, and nothing in the old citation tells you that you need them.

Who publishes what, and which copy wins

The Code is compiled and maintained by the Department of Legislative Services. Not a court, not the Secretary of State.

But the Code is not the official law, and Maryland says so plainly. The official compilation is the Laws of Maryland, the session laws, published chapter by chapter as the General Assembly passes them. The Code is adopted as evidence of the law in every state court and public office under Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 10-201. Where the Code and the session laws conflict, the session laws prevail.

That rule almost never bites. When it does bite, it bites hard, and it's the reason a codification error in Maryland is a real argument rather than a typo.

Regulations run through the Division of State Documents in the Office of the Secretary of State. That office publishes the Maryland Register every two weeks, and the Code of Maryland Regulations, which everyone calls COMAR, is updated on the same two-week rhythm.

Md. Code Ann., State Gov't § 7-217 settles which copy of a regulation governs, and the answer moves over time. Until a document is incorporated into COMAR, the official text is the most recent form of it in the Register. After incorporation, the official text is the one in COMAR. And the official text is the only version that is valid and enforceable, whatever any other copy says. So a rule adopted three weeks ago may not be in COMAR yet, and for that window the Register is the law.

The citation forms

Statutes take the article abbreviation, a section symbol, and a two-part number.

Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101

The number splits at the hyphen. The 5 is the title inside that article and the 101 is the section inside that title. Both halves always appear. Other articles abbreviate the same way, so you'll see Est. & Trusts, Lab. & Empl., State Gov't, Nat. Res. and Crim. Law doing the same job as a title number does everywhere else.

Regulations stack four numbers before any letter appears.

COMAR 26.11.06.03B(2)(b)(i)

The state's own drafting manual breaks that down as title 26 for the Department of the Environment, subtitle 11 for Air Quality, chapter 06, then regulation 03, with B, (2), (b) and (i) walking down inside it. Title, subtitle, chapter, regulation. Four numbers, always in that order, and the letter that follows is a section of the regulation rather than a new level of numbering.

Court rules are cited plainly, as in Md. Rule 1-104. The Register gets volume and issue, the abbreviation Md. R., then page and issue date.

The court renamed itself, and the reporters didn't

On December 14, 2022, the Court of Appeals of Maryland became the Supreme Court of Maryland and the Court of Special Appeals became the Appellate Court of Maryland. Voters approved the amendment on November 8 that year. The seven members of the high court are justices now.

Nothing else moved. The judiciary's own announcement says the precedents, rules and practices of the court are unaffected by the renaming. The reporters kept their abbreviations too, so Md. and Md. App. still mean what they meant. What you get is a decade of briefs and opinions naming a court that no longer exists, attached to citations that are still perfectly good.

The unreported-opinion rule changed in 2023

Maryland Rule 1-104 used to shut unreported opinions out entirely. Since July 1, 2023 the rule sorts them, and the sorting is worth memorizing if you write briefs there.

An unreported opinion still may not be cited for precedential value. An unreported opinion of the Supreme Court or the Appellate Court of Maryland issued on or after July 1, 2023 may be cited for persuasive value, but only if no reported authority adequately addresses the issue before the court. Per curiam opinions can't be cited either way. Unreported decisions from federal courts or other states may be cited as persuasive authority if that jurisdiction would allow it, and the court publishes a list of the jurisdictions it understands to allow it. If what you cite isn't in a publicly accessible electronic database, you attach a copy.

Read that second rule again. The date cutoff means an unreported Maryland opinion from June 2023 and one from August 2023 are treated differently, and the difference is invisible in the citation.

What the corpus looks like

Counted on 2026-09-18, Maryland comes to 55,098 sections. Statutes are 39,552 of them, with 38,182 in force and 1,370 reserved. Reserved is not repealed. Those are numbers held open with no text under them, which is how the drafters left room inside a subtitle for whatever the General Assembly does next.

Regulations run 12,739, of which 12,696 are in force and 43 are superseded. Then 1,220 court rule sections, 675 agency guidance documents, 601 attorney general opinions and 311 constitution sections.

So before you look anything up in Maryland, write the article name down first, then the number. The number on its own will always find you a section. It won't tell you whether that section is yours.

Facts used

All Maryland 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.