What is a statute?   

A statute is a law enacted by the legislature. You may also hear statutes referred to as "acts." Statutes are published in more than one way – by the date they became law and by topic. Statutes organized by the date they became law are called "session laws," while a "statutory code" organizes statutes by topic. Read more about how statutes are created in the Legislative History section. Question mark icon

In most cases, your focus should be on the code and which code sections apply to you. If you need to find out more about a code section’s legislative history, then the session law becomes important. 

In addition to an official version of the code published for Iowa by the Iowa General Assembly and for the United States by the Government Publishing Office, you can also use what is called an "annotated code."  

An annotated code has the text of the laws like the official code, but also has other information that can be useful to your research. An annotated code has information about some of the case law that has cited back to a code section, organized by topic, making it a good way to quickly find relevant case law.