Rhode Island gave itself a deadline of December 31, 2018. Resubmit the state's entire body of rules into one uniform code by then, in a format the Department of State prescribes, or a rule that missed the date stays unenforceable until it turns up there.
The instruction is in the statute, in plain words. R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-35-5(b) says agencies must resubmit all existing rules for publication into the code of state regulations by that date, and that anything left out "shall not be enforceable until the rule appears in the code of state regulations." The same subsection adds that all rules shall be written in plain language. What came out the other side is the Rhode Island Code of Regulations, and it is compact: 1,185 regulation sections beside 21,107 statute sections.
Who publishes what
The General Laws belong to the General Assembly's Law Revision Office. Its director is told by § 22-11-3.4 to rearrange, rephrase and consolidate the public laws so that redundancies are avoided, obsolete enactments eliminated, contradictions reconciled and imperfections cured, while having no authority to change the law or alter the substance. Substantive editing rides through both chambers on an annual statutes bill.
The rules belong to the Department of State, which the statute names as the codifier. It may assign numbers to any rule, that number becomes the official administrative code number, and rules "shall be cited and referred to by their official numbers."
One naming wrinkle. The statute calls the thing the code of state regulations, and in the next breath the Rhode Island administrative code. The Department publishes it as the Rhode Island Code of Regulations, RICR. Three names, one book.
Two forms, and only one of them says Rhode Island
Here's where the Bluebook and the state part ways. Open a Rhode Island Supreme Court opinion and the statutes are cited like this:
G.L. 1956 § 42-46-3
No state abbreviation. No "Gen. Laws" spelled out. Just G.L., the year of the revision, and three numbers. A 2025 opinion on the Open Meetings Act uses exactly that, and a criminal opinion from the same term cites G.L. 1956 § 21-28-4 the same way.
The authority is § 43-4-3, which says the statutes consolidated in "this revision of 1956" may be designated in all citations as the general laws, with the title, chapter and section added. Read the rest of that sentence, because it's the trap: those statutes "shall be deemed as statutes of the year in which they were, respectively, originally enacted." So 1956 dates the revision. It says nothing about when your section was passed.
Meanwhile the executive branch writes it out. Inside RICR rules you'll see R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-35-2. Both forms are correct in their own house, and text scraped from courts and text scraped from agencies will disagree on the same statute.
Reading a RICR address
A regulation cite looks like this:
100-RICR-10-00-1
Four levels. Title 100 is the Department of State. Chapter 10 is Administration, a core function. Subchapter 00 means the agency saw no need to split the function by topic, and 00 gets filled in for it. Part 1 is the individual rule. Pinpoints hang off the end, and they go deep: the Department's own filing manual gives 100-RICR-10-05-1.1(A)(1)(a)((1)) as a worked citation. Look at the last level. Those are doubled parentheses, a distinct depth from the single ones above them.
The leading number is the agency. Titles start at 100 and climb by twos, fives and tens so related bodies sit near each other. Health is 216, Environmental Management is 250, Business Regulation is 230. Which means a Rhode Island regulation cite tells you who wrote the rule before it tells you anything about the subject, and a reorganisation moves the address.
Work one rule end to end
Pull up 100-RICR-10-00-1, Access to Public Records. The page header carries the full address and the words ACTIVE RULE, so currency is settled before you read a line.
Section 1.1 is Authority and Purpose, and it cites R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-35-2 along with chapters 38-2, 42-8, 42-8.1 and 38-3. Section 1.2 is Definitions. The tabs across the top give you Regulation Text, Overview, Regulation, History and Rulemaking Documents. History is the version list, which is where you check what the rule said on a date that matters.
Why does 1,185 sound so small for a state's entire rule book? Because of what a section is here. The filing manual defines a Part as an individual rule on a specific topic, and the Part is the unit the code is built from. You are counting rules, at roughly the size of a document, against 21,107 statute sections counted at the size of a paragraph.
Three things to watch
Decimal sections are their own sections. In chapter 42-35, § 42-35-4 is filing and taking effect of rules, § 42-35-4.1 is refiling, and § 42-35-4.2 is periodic refiling. Three sections, three subjects. Chapter numbers take decimals too, as 42-8.1 does. Anything that splits a Rhode Island cite on the dot will merge provisions that have nothing to do with each other.
Refiling never really ended. Section 42-35-4.2 puts all filed rules on a periodic refiling cycle, the first Tuesday in January of every fifth year, so RICR history tabs are dotted with refile entries that changed no text.
Superseded branches stay visible in the tree. The Department of State's own title in the RICR still lists Subchapter 05 with the label "Superseded by Chapter 50." The old limb is displayed alongside the live one, and a crawler that walks the tree will collect both.
Facts used
All Rhode Island corpus counts below are from Vaquill AI's US primary law data.
| Claim | Value | Where from |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation sections | 1,185 | Corpus count |
| Regulation sections in force | 1,155 | Corpus status |
| Regulation sections repealed | 30 | Corpus status |
| Statute sections | 21,107 | Corpus count |
| Statute sections in force | 21,024 | Corpus status |
| Statute sections reserved | 70 | Corpus status |
| Court rules sections | 1,033 | Corpus count |
| Constitution sections | 118 | Corpus count |
| Resubmit all rules by December 31, 2018 | Unpublished rules unenforceable until they appear | R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-35-5(b) |
| Department of State is the codifier | Official code numbers, rules cited by them | R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-35-5(a) |
| Citation as "the general laws" of the 1956 revision | Statutes deemed of the year originally enacted | R.I. Gen. Laws § 43-4-3 |
| Court form G.L. 1956 § 42-46-3 | Rhode Island Supreme Court opinions, 2025 term | courts.ri.gov opinion PDFs |
| RICR structure and pinpoint depth | 100-RICR-10-05-1.1(A)(1)(a)((1)) | Rules and Regulations Formatting and Filing Manual |
| Duties of the law revision director | Rearrange, rephrase, consolidate, no substantive change | R.I. Gen. Laws § 22-11-3.4 |
| Periodic refiling every fifth year | First Tuesday in January | R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-35-4.2 |
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