Federal Legislative History Research
Quick Links:
- Introduction
- Types of Federal Legislative History Documents
- Locating Federal Legislative History Documents
1. Introduction
Legislative history refers to the events and documentation surrounding the consideration and enactment of a particular legislative bill. Legislative history research consists of looking for this documentation, which can often be helpful in shedding light on the meaning or intent of a particular piece of legislation or of specific language contained within that legislation. The most important documents for determining legislative intent are bill texts and committee reports. Other documents, such as transcripts of hearings and debates as well as Presidential statements, may also be relevant.
This guide focuses on federal legislative history and the documents produced by Congress, the federal legislature made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives. One can also do legislative history research on state bills and laws, although the resources are not usually as readily available. For guidance on doing this type of research for California legislation, consult the USC Law Library guide California Legislative History Research.
2. Types of Federal Legislative History Documents
Bills
By looking at the different versions of a bill as it made its way through the federal legislature, you may be able to infer what it had in mind with respect to a particular provision. Federal bill numbers are preceded by an "S." (for Senate) or "H.R." (for House of Representatives). During each congressional term (which consists of two 1 year sessions), the first bill introduced in the Senate and the House of Representatives becomes S. 1 and H.R. 1 respectively, and each subsequent bill during that term is numbered sequentially (i.e., S. 2, H.R. 2, S. 3, H.R. 3, etc.). Thus, in order to locate a particular bill, you need to know not only the bill number but also the congressional term in which the bill was introduced. Each 2-year congressional term is designated as a separate Congress, with its own number (e.g., 104th Congress, 105th Congress, etc.).
Reports
After a federal bill is introduced in the House or the Senate, it is referred to a Congressional committee. If and when a bill is sent back to the whole house for consideration, it is usually accompanied by a committee report. The committee report typically provides a summary and analysis of the bill's content and a statement regarding the bill's intent.
After a bill is passed by one house of Congress, it must be sent to the other house for approval. If the House and Senate do not pass the exact same version of a bill, a conference committee is convened to settle disagreements between the two houses. The conference committee usually issues its own report, which is typically the most important report for purposes of determining legislative intent.
Senate and House report numbers are preceded by "S. Rep." (for Senate Report) or "H. Rep." (for House Report). The first part of each report number designates the particular Congress in which the report was issued and the second part designates the specific report issued in that particular house during that Congress (e.g., S. Rep. 104-22 refers to the 22nd report issued in the Senate during the 104th Congress).
Hearings
Most federal bills are discussed in hearings before Congressional committees. Transcripts of congressional hearings are sometimes published and are usually considered part of a bill's legislative history. A published hearing contains all witness testimony before the committee (including prepared statements as well as the question and answer portion of the hearing). In some cases, exhibits are also included. As a source of legislative intent, transcripts of hearings are not as authoritative as reports. Comments made at hearings may represent only the views of individual legislators, individual witnesses, or special interest groups, and the comments may be contradictory.
Debates
Congressional debates on the floor of the House and Senate sometimes shed light on legislative intent, but as with hearings, remarks made during debates may represent only the views of individual legislators and may be contradictory. Also, members of Congress may alter or supplement their remarks prior to their publication.
Transcripts of Congressional floor debates are published in the Congressional Record. The numbers in a Congressional Record citation refer to the volume and page in the set where the remarks can be found (e.g., 75 Cong. Rec. 11235 refers to volume 75, page 11,235 of the Congressional Record).
Presidential Statements
The President may issue a statement when signing or vetoing a bill passed by Congress. This statement may include an interpretation of an ambiguous provision. Presidential statements are contained in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents as well as the Public Papers of the President.
3. Locating Federal Legislative History Documents
Finding the Public Law Number
Since 1957, each law enacted by Congress has been assigned a public law (P.L. or Pub. L.) number. Public law numbers are assigned in chronological order. The first part of the number designates the particular Congress that enacted the law and the second part designates the specific law enacted during that Congress (e.g., P.L. 104-35 refers to the 35th law passed during the 104th Congress).
If the piece of legislation you are interested in was enacted into law (thereby becoming a statute), the public law number will be of help to you when researching that law's legislative history. The federal statutory code can be used to identify the public law number(s) for a particular statute in which you are interested. For guidance on how to find statutes in the federal code, consult the USC Law Library guide Finding Federal Statutes, Regulations, and Related Cases.
If you look up your statute section in the code, you will typically see immediately after the code section a parenthetical note that provides the public law number for the act that created that section. And if your code section was subsequently amended, the note will also include the public law number for each law that amended your section.
It is important that you identify which public law introduced the particular statutory language in which you are interested. In the code, there will be statutory notes accompanying the code section to help you determine if the language you are interested in was contained in the original version of the code section or whether it was added in one of the subsequent amendments. Once you determine this, you can then select the appropriate public law number to use in your research.
Sources of Compiled Legislative History Information
Sometimes, you will be able to find a book or article that either brings together many of the relevant documents pertaining to a particular statute or at least provides citations to and/or excerpts from these documents. Useful tools to find if such a compilation exists for the statute you are researching include the library catalog, legal periodical indexes, and full text law review databases. For guidance on using these tools, consult the USC Law Library guides Finding Library Materials through Online Catalogs and How to Find Law Journal Articles. When you use these research tools, you may find it helpful to include search terms such as "legislative," "history," and/or "intent" along with your topical keywords.
An additional print resource that may be useful is Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories (located in the Law Library Ready Reference collection, KF49 .J6 1979). Organized by public law number, this publication provides a bibliography of compiled legislative histories for selected public laws from 1789 to the present. The citations are to law review articles, government documents, treatises, and other types of publications. For each source cited, information is provided as to the kind(s) of content provided in that source (e.g., citations, abstracts, full-text, etc.).
Online Sources Containing Legislative History Documents
Below are descriptions of 4 different electronic sources that contain the full text of one or more of the types of legislative history documents discussed above. Each of these sources is limited in the type of information provided and the time periods covered. The comparison chart that appears after the database descriptions can help you to determine which source(s) will be most helpful to you given the type(s) of documents you are looking for and the year(s) when your bill or law was introduced and considered by Congress.
- THOMAS
The Thomas website from the Library of Congress provides a wealth of legislative history information and documents going back to the late 1980s. The site provides the full text of public laws, legislative bills, summaries and status information for these bills, legislative debates, and committee reports. For the debates and reports, links are also provided to the PDF version of these documents.
When you first go to the Thomas site, you need to choose the type of document you wish to search (bills, public laws, debates in the Congressional Record, or committee reports). Most of the document type categories are listed on the left side of the screen (as shown below).
The Thomas website offers a variety of ways to search for documents, including by bill number, public law number, and by keyword or phrase. If you are searching by keyword and wish to combine multiple words in the same search, your results will be sorted into a few different categories, based on how near the search words are to each other in the documents. If you search for a bill or public law, you will be able to link to the bills, reports, and debates related to that bill or public law. If you are interested in a bill or law from a previous Congress, make sure you select that Congress (e.g., 104, 105, etc.) before entering your search.
For additional guidance on using Thomas, click on the "Help" link on the left hand portion of the screen. - GPO Access
GPO Access is the U.S. Government Printing Office's website that provides free access to a wealth of federal government information. The Legislative Branch Resources page on GPO Access provides links to various search pages for all of the types of Congressional documents discussed above (bills, reports, debates in the Congressional Record, and hearings). GPO Access also has an Executive Branch Resources page, which provides access to presidential statements contained in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States and Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. As noted on the chart below, GPO Access does not go back as far in time as the Thomas site for bills and debates. All of the documents however are available in PDF.
Each of the GPO search pages allows you to search by keyword. If you know the bill number for the piece of legislation in which you are interested, you can include that number as part of your search (e.g., "H.R. 3222"). As on THOMAS, you must select the Congress in which your bill or law was introduced before entering your search.
For additional guidance on searching GPO Access, you can click on the "Search Tips" link located next to the search box.
- HeinOnline (restricted to USC library users)
The U.S. Congressional Documents collection on HeinOnline provides access to the vast majority of the debates of Congress going back to 1789, including all of the volumes of the Congressional Record published since 1873. If you have a Congressional Record citation, merely click on the "Citation Navigator" tab at the top of the screen, choose "Cong. Rec." from the Abbreviation pull down menu on the left hand portion of the screen, and enter your volume and page numbers in the Vol. and Page boxes.
You can also search the Congressional Record by keyword by selecting the "Search" tab at the top of the screen. The screen shot below shows a sample "Advanced Search" on HeinOnline ("discrimination housing"~10). This is an example of a proximity search, specifying that the words appearing in quotation marks must appear within 10 words of each other in each document.
You can also connect your terms with the AND connector to indicate that both terms must appear somewhere in each document (e.g., discrimination AND housing) or the OR connector to specify that either term must appear in each document (e.g., housing OR mortgage). On HeinOnline, make sure you use capital letters when typing in your connectors (AND, OR, etc.), and use quotation marks around exact phrases (e.g., "due process").
For additional help with searching on HeinOnline, click on the "View Advanced Search Syntax" link on the left side of the screen. - U.S. Congressional Serial Set (restricted to USC library users)
The Serial Set includes the full text of historical Congressional committee reports as well as Presidential statements going back to the early 1800s. You can search for committee reports by keyword, bill number, and/or publication number. You can also browse various lists of subjects provided under a number of broad headings (as shown in the lower portion of the screen below).
When doing a keyword search in this database, you can use the AND and OR connectors as well as the NEAR# connector to indicate that the terms must be within a certain distance of each other (e.g., educational NEAR10 deduction requires that the term "educational" appears within 10 words of the term "deduction" in each document). - Comparison Chart
The chart below is designed to help direct you to the most appropriate electronic resource(s) for your research given the type(s) of documents you are looking for and the year when your bill or law was introduced and considered by Congress. In addition to providing the dates of coverage for each source, the chart also indicates if the source provides access to PDF images for each type of legislative history document. If none of these electronic sources meets your needs, consider one or more of the additional sources discussed in the next section of this guide.
* some gaps exist from 1989-1992; also, links to PDF images are missing for some of the earlier debatesTHOMAS GPO ACCESS HEIN ONLINE SERIAL SET Bills 1989 (101st Congress) - present 1993 (103rd Congress) - present (PDF) Reports 1995 (104th Congress) - present (PDF) 1995 (104th Congress) - present (PDF) 1817 (15th Congress) - 1980 (96th Congress) (PDF)*** Debates 1989 (101st Congress) - present (PDF)* 1994 (103rd Congress) - present (PDF) 1789 (1st Congress) - present (PDF) Hearings 1995 (104th Congress) - present (selective coverage) (PDF) Presidential Statements 1991 (102nd Congress) - present** (PDF) 1817 (15th Congress) - 1980 (96th Congress) (PDF)***
** "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States" goes back to 1991 on GPO Access. "Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents" only goes back to 1993.
*** This database is still a work in progress. As of August 2008, it only contains documents from 1817-1957. Newer documents (from 1958-1980) will gradually be added over time.
Additional Legislative History Sources and Finding Tools
Federal legislative history documents can also be found in print and microfiche. Below are descriptions of various resources and tools that contain and/or provide access to documents in these formats.
United States Code Congressional and Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.) (located on the Main Floor and Third Floor Federal Sections of the Library)
U.S.C.C.A.N. is a publication containing all of the laws enacted by Congress since 1948, selected Congressional committee reports related to those public laws, and Presidential signing statements since 1986. U.S.C.C.A.N. is organized by Congressional session. The public laws for each session are arranged in public law number order in volumes labeled "Laws" on the spines. The committee reports and signing statements are contained in accompanying volumes labeled "Legislative History" on the spines.
At the beginning of each public law in the "Laws" volumes, you will find a reference to the page number in the corresponding "Legislative History" volume where you can find the related committee report(s) and signing statement (if available). There will also be references to the corresponding bills, citations to related reports that are not reprinted in U.S.C.C.A.N., as well as the dates of consideration and passage of the law in the House and Senate.
Library's Microfiche Collection of Congressional Documents
The USC Law Library has a microfiche collection of U.S. Congressional documents, which includes committee reports and hearings going back to 1970 as well as bills going back to 1969. This collection is located in the Library's Photocopy/Microform Room on the Main Floor.
In order to access a report or hearing from this collection, you will need either the document's CIS number (for items from 1970-1980) or a SuDoc classification number (for items from 1980 to the present). For a bill, you will need a bill number. These various numbers can be obtained by using the database LexisNexis Congressional, available to all USC users. This database indexes U.S. Congressional documents from 1970 to the present and provides a number of ways to search for legislative history information, including by keyword and by document number (e.g., public law number, bill number, report number, etc.). If you wish to pull up information for all of the legislative history publications related to a particular public law, click on the "Search by Number" tab at the top of the screen, select "Find a legislative history by number" as your task, and then enter your public law number in the boxes next to the "Public Law Number" option (as shown below).
Once you obtain your CIS, SuDoc, or bill number for each document in which you are interested, come to the Library Reference Office and someone can assist you in retrieving the correct microfiche and using the microfiche reader to read and/or copy the document(s).
Using Library Catalogs
Most libraries collect print versions of individual federal legislative documents, particularly Congressional hearings. These documents can typically be located by using library catalogs. Therefore, if you are able to identify the name of a hearing from LexisNexis Congressional (discussed above) or from another source, it may be worthwhile to search the name of the hearing on one or more catalogs. At USC, you should check both the HOMER catalog (which covers USC's main government documents collection) as well as ADVOCAT (which catalogs the Law Library's more modest collection of government documents). Most of the government documents cataloged on HOMER are kept at an off-site storage facility but can be paged by USC faculty, staff, and students. You can also search other library catalogs to see if the document might be available at any other libraries. For guidance on searching library catalogs, consult the USC Law Library guide Finding Library Materials through Online Catalogs.
Congressional Record
In addition to the online versions of the Congressional Record discussed above for transcripts of legislative debates, there are print and microfiche versions that you can use in the Law Library. The print set is located in the Library's Compact Shelving Section on the Third Floor (KF35 .U54) and the microfiche set is located in the Library's Photocopy/ Microform Room on the Main Floor. The Library's holdings in both print and microfiche go all the way back to the very first volume (1873), though there are gaps in both sets starting with volume 131 from 1985. Both the print and microfiche versions contain index volumes in case you do not have a specific Congressional Record citation.
Presidential Documents
The Library also holds print versions of both Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents as well as Public Papers of the President, which you can use to find presidential signing statements. The Library's set of Weekly Compilation goes back to 1972 and is located under "W" in the alphabetically arranged Periodical Stacks on the Main Floor. The Library's Public Papers collection is located in the Main Floor Stacks (J82 .E4) and covers presidents from 1929 forward (excluding Franklin D. Roosevelt).