State Regulatory Research

Massachusetts State Regulatory Research

The Code of Massachusetts (CMR) was first published in 1976. It is a loose-leaf binder set containing the regulations of all the state agencies that are required to submit their rules to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office.

The CMR is updated biweekly by the Massachusetts Register. The Massachusetts Register publishes state regulations (both emergency and permanent regulations), executive orders of the Governor, opinions of the Attorney General, notices of public hearings and other notices from the Secretary of State’s Office. The Register physically updates the printed CMR. When the Register is released, pages with newly amended regulations are taken out of the Register and are inserted into the corresponding volume and section of the CMR. The older pages of the CMR are then discarded. This is important to note because the CMR as whole is a constantly changing document throughout the year.
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In 1987 the Social Law Library began archiving the Code as it appeared on December 31st of each year. These archived versions are the documents that are now available on LLMC.

To access the archived Codes of Massachusetts Regulations, first sign into the Social Law Library’s Database page:
https://www.socialaw.com/research/databases/

Next click on the link for Massachusetts Regulations Research

If you need to pull a copy of a regulation as it appeared on a specific date, start by accessing that year of the CMR. When you locate the specific regulations that you need, note the date at the bottom of the page. This date is the last time that the regulation/page was updated. Often specific sections of the Code are not updated frequently - a 1997 edition of the Code may have a page or section that has not been updated since 1994. If that is the case, then the 1994 language was still effective for all of 1997. If the regulation was updated within the same year as the archived edition, you may need to do additional research to figure out what the regulation looked like on a specific date.

Finding a regulation from a specific time period:

Let’s say that you need to know what 501 CMR 3.02 looked like in 1997. When you go to pull the 1997 edition, it will look like this:

Note the date in the corner. This page was added at the very end of 1997, so it is unlikely that this is what the regulation looked like for most of 1997. What did it look like for the rest of that year? There are two ways to find out:

The easiest way is to simply check the previous year of the CMR - the 1996 edition:

There is one more step to confirm that this 1996 edition is how it appeared in 1997 prior to the 12/26/97 amendment. We need to make sure that there were no other amendments during 1997 - between January 1st and the December 26th amendment. To do that, consult the Cumulative Tables to the Register. Each edition of the Register will have a Cumulative Table, alerting you to the changes to the Code through that issue. Consulting the Cumulative Table for the last issue of the year provides the best overview of the changes for that year. For this example, we will locate the Cumulative Table in Register Issue 833, published Dec. 26, 1997. The Cumulative Tables will typically appear after Notices and before the actual regulations - check the table of contents for that issue if you cannot locate it quickly. LLMC labels it as “Table” in the navigation bar on the left:

Now we have confirmation that the 12/26/97 amendment was the ONLY amendment to 501 CMR 3.00 in that year. The text of the 1996 edition would have been effective for the majority of 1997. If there had been multiple amendments within the same year, then the best way to view each change would be to consult the Register issue where each amendment was published.

Compiling a Regulatory History:

The Cumulative Tables are also the easiest way to compile a history of all of the amendments to a regulation over time. The State Library has pulled the final cumulative table for each year and arranged them together for easier research. You can locate the PDFs of those tables on the State Library’s digital archive: https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/207262

The Cumulative tables will also point you to the issue of the Massachusetts Register where the amendment was first published, providing an alternate way to access the version of the regulation that was in effect at that time. This is especially useful if a section of the CMR was amended multiple times in a single year, as the archived Code only reflects the last amendment of each year.

LLMC contains issues of the Massachusetts Register beginning in 1987 (No. 555 and following). The State Library has digitized older issues, beginning with two trial issues published in 1976 (labeled TR #1 and TR# 2). Note that the Massachusetts Register did not start being published biweekly until 1986:
https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/828247

Prior to 1976, administrative agencies in Massachusetts sometimes published rules or regulations, however these publications were not centralized. Individual agencies published pamphlets or letters. Distribution of these materials varied and not all have been preserved well. For research on administrative rules prior to 1976, you should consult a wide variety of resources: the online catalogs of the Social Law Library, the Trial Court Law Library, and Massachusetts State Library; the individual agency; the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office; and court filings (particularly addendum and appendixes of Supreme Judicial Court cases).

For assistance with regulatory research, do not hesitate to contact the Reference Department at [email protected] or (617)226-1520. We handle these types of requests frequently and can answer questions, track down regulations, and even compile histories for you.