BoleyBlogs!

Legislative Histories of U.S. Laws on the Internet

Word has reached these shores that the invaluable Legislative Source Book has now been updated with a highly-recommended (three cheers! fist bumps! two thumbs up! two snaps up!) collection of links to Legislative Histories of U.S. Laws on the Internet.

In one page, Legislative Histories provides quick access to pretty much all compiled legislative histories on the web – whether free (non-commercial sites like the Library of Congress) or fee (commercial sites like Heinonline, Westlaw and LexisNexis). This service is provide by the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C., or LLSDC for short.

The legislative histories are organized by Popular Name (the ’short title,’ e.g. USA PATRIOT ACT) and by Public Law (e.g. PL 107-56).

The free legislative histories are from these sources:

• Library of Congress (LoC) via THOMAS
• Department of Commerce (DoC)
• Federal Reserve Board (FRB)
• Other U.S. Agencies
• Public Citizen
• Center for Democracy & Technology
• and more

The commercial (for-fee) legislative history links are to:

• Heinonline
• LexisNexis
• Westlaw

Users must have subscription access to these commercial sources. Students at Lewis & Clark Law School and most every other law school in the U.S. will have individual Westlaw and LexisNexis passwords. Heinonline links will work fine for folks on those campuses; from off-campus students and faculty will probably need to use links to Heinonline provided by law libraries on database pages and the like.

Be sure to read the explanatory notes at the end of the Legislative Histories page. It provides a fine overview of the topic, tips for accessing the free sites, helpful descriptions of the coverage in Heinonline, LexisNexis and Westlaw, and links to related materials.

Legislative histories are “compilations of related documents to a specific U.S. public law that precede the law’s enactment.” Basically, the publications generated in the process of a bill becoming (or not becoming) a statute: the public law, committee reports, committee hearings, congressional debate, congressional and agency documents, versions of proposed bills, and presidential signing statements. They are used to determine as best possible the intent of the legislature in passing (or not passing…) the legislation.

The LLSWDC Practitioner’s Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent provides much more detail on the purpose and process of compiling legislative histories.

Sources: WH, announcement