LibGuides: Legislative History (Federal &amp; State): Finding Legislative Documents

Finding Legislative Documents

This guide will help you find the following types of legislative documents:

Bills
A bill is a legislative proposal before Congress. Bills from each house are assigned a number in the order in which they are introduced, starting at the beginning of each Congress (first and second sessions).
Hearings
A hearing is a meeting of a Senate, House, joint, or special committee of Congress, usually open to the public, to obtain information and opinions on proposed legislation. In addition, hearings may also be purely exploratory in nature, providing testimony and data about topics of current interest.
Debates
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session.
Committee Prints
Publications issued by Congressional Committees that include topics related to their legislative or research activities, as well as other matters such as memorial tributes. They contain internal background information, and they do not have a consistent numbering system.
Reports & Documents
Congressional reports are published by congressional committees and describe proposed legislation. They typically recommend passage of a bill.
Public Laws
After the President signs a bill into law, it is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, legal statutory citation, and prepared for publication as a slip law. It is then published in the United States Statutes at Large.
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Before 1957, Congress used Chapter numbers instead of Public Law numbers.

Looking for more definitions?

Senate Glossary of Legislative Terms
Find more definitions here, including Christmas Tree Bill.

Reading a Citation

If you have a citation

Here's a quick guide to the Bluebook abbreviations for the documents found in this guide. For detailed information, see Bluebook Rule 13.

Note: Several citation forms include the abbreviated name of the chamber. S. is Senate. H.R. is the House of Representatives.

Examples:

BILL: H.R. 4173, 111th Cong. (2010)

REPORT: H.R. Rep. No. 111-517 (2010) (Conf. Rep.)

DOCUMENT: S. Doc. No. 109-19 (2006)

COMMITTEE PRINT: House Committee on Education and Labor, Picketing and Boycotts. Selected Readings, March 1 1959

DEBATE: 152 Cong. Rec. 1988 (2006)

PUBLIC LAW: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (2010)

Unfamiliar with the Bluebook? See the law library's Bluebook LibGuide.

Searching for Legislative History

Accessing legislative materials is no longer as difficult as it once was- many of the items you are looking for are available in a variety of sources electronically.

Determining what you will need, sifting through results, and understanding which tool to use, however, is more complicated than ever. This section of the guide will provide you with some basic guidance about how to get started, where to look for specific materials or time periods, and best practice is legislative research. This guidance is by no means exhaustive. Should you want or need more information, please be sure to check out the "More Resources" section on the Home page of this guide.

This guide will discuss how to find legislative materials

FINDING LEGISLATIVE DOCUMENTS BY CITATION (see subpages by item type in the lefthand column)

USING A COMPILED LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

Getting Started

The language of each Code section is based on the original act that created it and any later laws that amended it. To compile a complete legislative history for a current federal law, it is necessary to locate the documents related to both the creating act and any later amendments. To begin the process, it is helpful to locate as much as possible of the following information for each act:

its Public Law (or chapter) number [Pub. L. 110-2];
its location in the U.S. Statutes at Large [121 Stat. 5.];
the date of enactment [Feb. 2, 2007];
the number of the House or Senate bill that was enacted [110- H.R. 475].

The Public Law number and Statutes at Large citation are easily found with the text of the codified language in the official U.S. Code or the annotated unofficial versions. Each section of the Code also provides a short parenthetical note explaining how the amendments changed the existing text.

This information will help you better navigate a variety of search interfaces and research databases.

Guide to Legislative History Sources

Historical and current legislative documents can be found in several sources. Because the amount of information available on a given piece of legislation can be voluminous, searching is not often the best place to start. It is, however, sometimes necessary to find legislative materials using traditional searching techniques.
When doing so, remember to be mindful of:

the depth of coverage of the resource: What type of materials does it collect? How far back does it reach?
the type of searching interface the resource has: What information do I need? Is there a more usable option?
the costs and access issues associated with the resources: Is the source free? Do I have access? Are their fees associated with retrieval?

Below is a quick guide to government and commercial legislative sources, along with a brief description of each.

Congress.gov
Congress.gov is a government website which contains information about current bills before Congress.

Lexis+ This link opens in a new window
New interface for LexisNexis. Lexis Advance contains primary Law for all U.S. jurisdiction plus secondary sources and analytical material. See also Westlaw Next, Lois Law and Bloomberg Law.
This subscription is available by login and password and limited to College of Law students and Faculty.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Provides abstracts and some full-text of bills, Committee reports, prepared testimony from hearings, and public laws, as well as legislative histories. Check out Proquest Congressionals libguides: http://proquest.libguides.com/
ProQuest's Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
Searchable database containing legislative materials, historical context, legislative process information. Focus is on major legislative acts.

Westlaw Legislative History
Westlaw has a Legislative History page.
American Memory: A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation
American Memory provides access to the records and acts of Congress from the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875. This is a good place to look for 18th and 19th century legislative documents as well as primary source documents from the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention.
Congressional Committee Materials at GovInfo
Congressional Committee Prints
Congressional Documents
Congressional Hearings
Congressional Reports
Michrofiche (University of Illinois library collection)
You can find the microfiche on the lower level of the Law Library. The Law Library has a microform reader that will allow you to scan your microform to PDF. Instructions for how to use the microform reader are provided next to the machine.
You can search the catalog for mircofiche records by narrowing your results using the filters on the right-hand side. Select 'mircofiche'.
Print materials (University of Illinois library collection)
The Law Library also has volumes of legislative documents in print. Some documents are classified using Library of Congress Classification (LCC). Other legislative documents are classified using the Superintendent of Documents (SuDoc) classification system.