Some internet sites are best searched with the Public Law (P.L.) number of the legislation. If you only know the name of the law, you can find the P.L. number in a number of different ways:
Nexis Uni is a database of business, news and legal information. The database has a separate page for Statutes and Legislation.
Slip Law is the first official publication of laws passed by the U.S. Congress. Text of these laws, often with marginal notes and citations for each law, and a legislative history for public laws are available on the U.S. Government Printing Office web site. The Thomas site links to the GPO web site for the full text of the bill.
The United States Statutes at Large is a chronological arrangement of all the laws passed during a session of Congress. These are also known as "session laws" and "public laws." To find particular laws in this set, you need to know the year or the Congressional session that the law was passed. The Statutes at Large provides bill numbers.
The United States Code (USC) presents laws of the U.S. arranged by subjects, making the search for all statutes relevant to a particular topic easier to do.
The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the administrative law of the U.S. The statutes in the U.S. Code, which are often intentionally broad in scope, are interpreted by the executive branch through a rulemaking process and then set down in the CFR.
Individual government agencies often present laws and regulations within their purview on their web sites. Some relevant web sites are:
In Illinois, the Illinois Compiled Statutes is the codification of laws passed by the Illinois General Assembly. The Compiled Statutes are organized by topic, e.g., "Health and Safety," "Agriculture and Conservation."
Other states will have their statutes on the web as well, but they may have slightly different titles. For example, Missouri calls their collection of laws "Revised Statutes of Missouri." Do a Google search using the name of the state and the word "statutes" to find laws from other states.