Pritzker Legal Research Center: Federal Legislative History: Finding Legislative Histories and Legislative Documents

Finding Legislative Histories and Legislative Documents

In many cases, one does not have to reinvent the wheel in looking for a statute's legislative history; that is, it has often already been compiled. In other cases, however, and most often with regard to newly-enacted laws, a researcher might have to collect the individuals documents (bills, hearings, reports, presidential statements) herself.

Compiled Legislative Histories

Don't reinvent the wheel! In many cases, legislative histories have already been compiled for major laws. Check these resources for starters:

Westlaw: U.S. GAO Federal Legislative Histories This link opens in a new window
On microfiche and also available on Westlaw; this is one of the most comprehensive collections of compiled legislative histories; some going back to 1915; digitized on Westlaw in PDF through part of the 104th Congress (1995).
HeinOnline: U.S. Federal Legislative History Library This link opens in a new window
A collection of compiled legislative histories, as well as sources for finding additional legislative documents.

How Congress Passes Laws Now [Villanova Law]
Research project by John Cannan (Villanova Law) reviewing how laws were passed based during the 111th-116th Congresses (2009-2020) and the information sources that were generated for each law. Site contains downloadable spreadsheets where you can see data about committees, votes, amendments, reports, and more.

Partially Compiled Legislative Histories

U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News
A good place to start for a "quick & dirty" legislative history, USCCAN usually has the most important committee report(s), and sometimes significant floor debate.

Full or Partial Listings of Documents in a Legislative History

Proquest Congressional & Executive This link opens in a new window
Proquest Congressional includes many full-text documents, but in some cases only a listing and description of the documents contained within a legislative history are available.

Congress.gov
Congress.gov (the successor to the Library of Congress' THOMAS database, allows users to find detailed chronologies of bills. The chronologies will link to the full-text, where available, of bills and their amendments, committee reports, and floor debate; occasionally hearings will be identified, but not always.

HeinOnline: U.S. Statutes at Large This link opens in a new window
Since 1976, laws published in Statutes at Large include a brief listing of bill number(s), any committee reports, and presidential statements.

Sources for Individual Legislative Documents

Many of the resources discussed in the prior pages, such as Congress.gov, Proquest Congressional, HeinOnline, and Westlaw, can also be used to find individual legislative documents (in addition to compiled histories or listings of documents). Here are a few more to consult when you have a particular document to look for.

LLSDC Legislative Sourcebook
The Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C. has compiled a tremendous amount of helpful information regarding legislative research, including where to find individual documents, as well as compiled histories, from both free and commercial online resources.
U.S. Congressional Committees
Links to Congressional Committee websites. Committee websites are often the first place users can find a committee's published hearing transcripts, which can often take a long time to be published.
Govinfo.gov
The Government Publishing Office's successor to FDsys, GovInfo provides free access to official government documents, primarily from the legislative and executive branches.

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Federal Legislative History

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Finding Legislative Histories and Legislative Documents

Compiled Legislative Histories

Partially Compiled Legislative Histories

Full or Partial Listings of Documents in a Legislative History

Sources for Individual Legislative Documents