The Alabama State Code, formally the Code of Alabama 1975, is the official subject-organized collection of every general and permanent law in effect in the state. It covers criminal offenses, traffic rules, banking, agriculture, taxation, public health, and much more, and you can read the full text for free on the Alabama Legislature’s ALISON website.1Alabama Legislature. Code of Alabama
How the Code Is Organized
The code uses three tiers: Titles, Chapters, and Sections. Titles are broad subject areas. Title 13A holds the entire Criminal Code. Title 32 covers motor vehicles and traffic. Title 1 opens the code with general provisions, including rules of construction that tell you how to interpret statutory language.
Inside each Title, Chapters group related topics, and Sections carry the actual text of the law along with any penalties or procedures. The numbering runs through dozens of subject areas, starting with agriculture in Title 2 and animals in Title 3 and continuing through education, taxation, public health, and beyond.
How to Read an Alabama Code Citation
Citations follow a Title-Chapter-Section pattern. Take Section 13A-11-7. The 13A is the Title (Criminal Code). The 11 is the Chapter (offenses against public order and safety). The 7 is the Section itself: disorderly conduct.2Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-11-7 – Disorderly Conduct
That Section describes what qualifies as disorderly conduct, including fighting, unreasonable noise, and obstructing traffic, and classifies the offense as a Class C misdemeanor.2Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-11-7 – Disorderly Conduct The penalties are in other Sections of the same Title. Section 13A-5-6 sets felony prison ranges: Class C, one year and one day to ten years; Class B, two to twenty years; Class A, ten years to life.3Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 13A-5-6 – Sentences of Imprisonment for Felonies Section 13A-5-11 caps felony fines at $5,000 for Class C, $10,000 for Class B, and $20,000 for Class A.4Justia Law. Alabama Code 13A-5-11 – Fines for Felonies
You rarely find the full picture in a single Section. Definitions, sentencing ranges, and fines often live apart, so tracing a question through the code often means checking two or three Sections in the same Title.
Where to Read the Code for Free
ALISON, the Legislature’s official site, hosts a searchable version of the full Code of Alabama along with pending legislation and the state constitution.1Alabama Legislature. Code of Alabama The Secretary of State’s site offers a separate search for legislative acts from 1987 forward, with full-text copies from mid-1999 onward.5Alabama Secretary of State. Legislative Acts Use that one when you want to see a law as originally passed, before codification.
For in-person research, the Alabama Supreme Court and State Law Library holds the code, appellate case law, and the statutes of all fifty states.6Alabama Judicial System. State Law Library Some county law libraries also keep physical copies, though availability varies.
Annotated vs. Unannotated Editions
The statutory text is identical everywhere. What changes is what surrounds it. An unannotated version gives you the law plus historical notes on when it was enacted or amended. An annotated version adds citations to court decisions interpreting the statute, related regulations, and secondary sources. The main annotated print edition is Michie’s Alabama Code from LexisNexis, aimed at attorneys and law librarians. For most people checking a specific statute, the free unannotated text on ALISON is enough.
How a Law Gets Into the Code
A new law starts as a bill passed by the Alabama Legislature and signed by the Governor, or allowed to become law without a signature. The enacted act is recorded chronologically in the Acts of Alabama, which archives every law passed in a given session but sorts nothing by topic.
Codification is the step that assigns each new act to the right Title, Chapter, and Section, and updates any existing Sections the act amends or repeals. That ongoing maintenance is what lets you read a Section on ALISON and trust it reflects the law as it currently stands.
What the Code Does Not Cover
The Code of Alabama holds statutes passed by the Legislature, but it is not the only source of binding rules in the state. Alabama agencies with rulemaking authority issue regulations collected in the Alabama Administrative Code, maintained by the Legislative Services Agency.7Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 41-22-7 – Contents, Publication, and Availability of Administrative Material; Duties of Legislative Services Agency, Legal Division Statutes set the broad rules; agency regulations fill in details like testing methods or reporting deadlines. Both carry the force of law, and a compliance question often needs both.
Federal law can also displace what the code says. Under the Supremacy Clause, a valid federal statute controls when it conflicts with state law, so areas like immigration, bankruptcy, patent law, and federal tax are governed federally even where Alabama has related provisions. Local law sits below the state code: cities and counties can pass ordinances, but a local ordinance that conflicts with a state statute gives way to the statute.
Some Sections of the code did not originate in Montgomery. Uniform acts drafted by the Uniform Law Commission, most prominently the Uniform Commercial Code covering sales, secured transactions, and negotiable instruments, become part of the Alabama code once the Legislature adopts them, and they are cited in the same Title-Chapter-Section format as any other statute.8Uniform Law Commission. Uniform Commercial Code