translate
Blog

Finding Pennsylvania Municipal Codes

By Michelle Buhalo •  September 9, 2021

The local level governments in Pennsylvania consist of counties, cities, boroughs, and townships. These local levels (also called "municipalities") may have ordinances or laws compiled into local codes. Many Pennsylvania municipalities provide free online access to their codes through a third-party publisher. The most common of these publishers are listed below.

American Legal Publishing - Online codes for Pennsylvania municipalities include Johnstown, Lower Chichester Township, Philadelphia, Reading, Sharon, and Swarthmore.

Code Publishing - Contains the online version of the Code of Ordinances for more than a dozen Pennsylvania municipalities, including Bristol Township, Richland Township, and Yardley Borough.

General Code Publishers - Features online codes for more than 500 Pennsylvania municipalities, plus towns and cities in over 20 other states.

Municipal Code Corporation - Covers all U.S. states. Online codes for Pennsylvania municipalities include Bensalem Township, Kennett Square, Kennett Township, London Grove Township, Marshall Township, Pittsburgh, Southampton Township, and Wilkes-Barre.

If the municipality is not included in one of the above resources, try searching the municipality's website. You may need to contact the municipality directly.

For additional information on municipalities in Pennsylvania, see Pennsylvania Legal Research Handbook Chapter 5: Municipal Law and The Pennsylvania Manual Section 6: Local Government.

More from the blog

Caselaw & the Courts
November 20, 2025

PA County Reporters on LLMC Digital

LLMC Digital is a collection of archival material from the U.S. federal government, U.S. state governments, territorial governments, various Anglo-American collections, and several foreign jurisdictions. Its U.S. state materials includes various Pennsylvania county reporters, many of which begin...
Caselaw & the Courts
November 7, 2025

How to Find Pennsylvania County Cases with Jenkins Member Databases

In Pennsylvania, there are only a select number of Court of Common Pleas opinions that get published each year. While there is no one place to search all county cases, Jenkins members have access to three databases that include Pennsylvania county case content. If you're a member, make sure you're...
Law Journal Press
October 31, 2025

Hidden Gem: Law Journal Press

If you're a member of Jenkins, as well as a solo practitioner or an attorney at a firm with less than 50 attorneys, then this post is for you! If you've never utilized our Law Journal Press (LJP) database, consider this your motivation. Law Journal Press has over a hundred digital full-text books...