LibGuides: Summer Legal Research Tips: Federal Statutory Law

Federal Laws Quick Links

Guide to Federal Legislative History Research
A guide to federal legislative history research from the University of Washington School of Law
How Our Laws are Made
A highly detailed and technical description of the lawmaking process.
Congress.gov
Congress.gov is a government website which contains information about current bills before Congress.
United States House of Representatives
The home page for the House of Representatives. Contains information on current and past legislation, legislative agencies, information on current members and other resources related to the House of Representatives.
United States Senate
Home page for the US Senate - contains information on pending bills and legislation, current and past senators, committee information and other resources related to the US Senate.
United States Code at GovInfo
The United States Code is the codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. It is divided by broad subjects into 53 titles and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Finding a Law by Name

If you know the name of a law, there are several tools available to look up the official citation for the law:

Cornell's LII: USC Popular Name Table
Cornell's Legal Information Institute TOPN (Table of Popular Names)
This resource is useful if you know the name of the law you're researching (e.g. The Do-Not-Call Implementation Act). This will identify where the law is codified in the Code.

Finding Federal Statutory Law

Federal law is available online through GPO Access:

Type of Law	Description
Public Laws	Laws published individually in the order they are passed by Congress
Statutes at Large	Collections of the laws and resolutions passed by each Congress
United States Code	All the laws of the United States, reorganized and codified by subject

There are also several databases available through the Library that provide searching within federal statutory law:

LexisNexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Contains public laws as well as an annotated US Code. The annotated Code contains notes for each section of law that provide information about the history of the statute and any courts that may have interpreted the law.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Contains public laws and the US Code, as well as bills, legislative history, and other Congressional documents.

Federal Legislative History

Legislative history refers to the progress of a bill through the legislative process, and to the documents that are created during that progress. It is useful to research the legislative history if you are interested in how a particular law was created. Many of these documents are available online through FDSYS:

Type of Law	Description
History of Bills	The History of Bills lists legislative actions on bills that are reported in the Congressional Record.
Congressional Bills	GPO Access contains all published versions of bills from the 103rd (1993-1994) Congress forward to the present date.
Congressional Record	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. GPO Access contains Congressional Record volumes from 140 (1994) to the present.
Conference Reports	A conference report is an agreement on legislation that is negotiated between the House and Senate via conference committees. It is printed and submitted to each chamber for its consideration, such as approval or disapproval.
Congressional Hearings	A hearing is a meeting or session of a Senate, House, Joint, or Special Committee of Congress, usually open to the public, to obtain information and opinions on proposed legislation, conduct an investigation, or evaluate/oversee the activities of a government department or the implementation of a Federal law. GPO Access has selected hearings online*.

*Print Hearing can be found in the library catalog.

U of I Catalog
This includes only the holdings at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.

There are also several databases available through the Library that provide broader coverage and searching of federal legislative history materials:

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/
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Provides law reviews and journal articles prior to the dates traditionally covered by Lexis and Westlaw. Provides full text search capabilities.