Illinois Administrative Procedures Act
The Illinois Administrative Procedures Act is located at 5 ILCS 100/1-1 through 100/15-10. The act covers the standard issues in administrative procedure: rulemaking, regulatory oversight, adjudication of administrative issues, publication, licensing, and a host of others in fine detail.
The Illinois Administrative Code
The Code is the Illinois equivalent of the Code of Federal Regulations. There are 95 titles in the Code, each covering a different administrative subject and Illinois agency. While a copy of the table of contents is available at the Illinois Secretary of State’s web site, (http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/index/home.html), there are no links to online versions of the code. The Secretary’s page offers to reproduce individual sections for a fee. This does not mean, however, that there are no other copies of the rules available. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules of the Illinois Legislature now places an electronic copy of the Illinois Administrative Code on its web site (http://www.ilga.gov/commission/jcar/admincode/titles.html).
Administrative Code databases are on both Lexis and Westlaw in their respective Illinois sections. These databases are probably the most reliable and up to date versions of the Code.
A growing number (more than half) of Illinois agency web sites publish their sections of the Code. Not all agencies have their rules or decisions on the web.
This is the Illinois equivalent of the Federal Register. The publication appears weekly, in paper, as a compendium of new and proposed rules issued by an agency in the past week. One volume covers an entire calendar year. Each issue that has an index cumulates the entire year up to the publication date of that issue, with the last issue of the year containing the final cumulative index for the year/volume.
The Illinois Register is now on the web at the Secretary of State’s web site from starting with the August 2002 issues. Aside from this online version from the Secretary of State, the only other databases that contain the full text of the Register are databases that appear respectively on Lexis and Westlaw. Both services not only provide single databases, but also offer a combined search with the Administrative Code with a single query. The Lexis and Westlaw databases have the text for the full run of the Illinois Register.
Frequently, research requires locating the citation and current text of a particular regulation. This is relatively easy, given the options for searching text electronically. However, neither these databases nor any paper version of the Code contain archived versions. The common way to see what a Code provision read five years ago is to trace back the amendments in the Illinois Register. Be forewarned that this is a tedious and time-consuming process. As the Register is on Lexis and Westlaw, some tracing may be done by section or keyword search. However, coverage starts in 1995, limiting use to no earlier than that.
The administrative codes from other states are generally in full text on their official government web sites. Some states also include their Register-type products online. All administrative codes and updates (that exist) for the states are on Lexis and Westlaw. These are probably the best sources for out of state codes.