<P> A typical example of the diversity of contemporary state law is the legal test for finding a duty of care, the first element required to proceed with a lawsuit for negligence (the basis for most personal injury lawsuits). A 2011 article found that 43 states use a multifactor balancing test usually consisting of four to eight factors, but there are 23 various incarnations because so few states use exactly the same test, and consolidating those into a single list results in 42 unique factors . Naturally, the laws of different states frequently come into conflict with each other, which has given rise to a huge body of law regulating the conflict of laws in the United States . </P> <P> The diversity of U.S. state law first became a notable problem during the late 19th century era known as the Gilded Age, when interstate commerce was nurtured by new technologies like the telegraph, the telephone, and the railroad . Many lawyers during the Gilded Age complained about how the diversity and volume of state law hampered interstate trade and introduced complexity and inconvenience into virtually any interstate transaction (commercial or otherwise). There have been three major reactions to this problem, none of which were completely successful: codification, uniform acts, and the Restatements . </P> <P> The first reaction, codification, was an attempt to simplify the basic task of identifying the current state law that was (1) relevant to a particular legal question and (2) currently in force . Today, all states but Pennsylvania have completed the process of codifying all of their general statutory law into legal codes . Codification was an idea borrowed from the civil law through the efforts of American lawyer David Dudley Field . Field, in turn, was building upon early (but wholly unsuccessful) foundational work by the English legal philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who actually coined the verb "to codify" for the process of drafting a legal code . </P> <P> Naturally, there is much diversity in the structure of the state codes, reflecting the diversity of the statutory law on which they were built . New York's codes are known as "Laws ." California and Texas simply call them "Codes ." Other states use terms such as "Code of (state name)", "Revised Statutes", or "Compiled Statutes" for their compilations . California, New York, and Texas use separate subject - specific codes; Maryland's code has, as of 2013, mostly been recodified from numbered articles into named articles; virtually all other states and the federal government use a single code divided into numbered titles or other top - level divisions . Louisiana is a unique hybrid in that it has five subject - specific codes and a set of Revised Statutes for everything else . A poorly drafted 1864 anti-corruption amendment to Pennsylvania's constitution prevented its legislature from starting comprehensive codification until 1970 (after the state constitution was finally amended to add the necessary exception in 1967). </P>

Cases that are between an individual and the state are under what type of law