HeinOnline, our most-excellent database providing the actual images of (here goes…) over 800 legal journals, every Federal Register, U.S. Treaties and treaty indexes, dozens of Legal Classics – digital library of many of the “greatest works ever written on law”, all U.S. Reports, and U.S. Attorney General Opinions (phew), has two new libraries for all your legal research needs.
U.S. Statutes at Large Library
The official source for the laws and resolutions passed by the U.S. Congress, the complete Statutes at Large are now available on HeinOnline:
Every law, public and private, ever enacted by the Congress is published in the Statutes at Large in order of the date of its passage. Until 1948, all treaties and international agreements approved by the Senate were also published in the set. In addition, the Statutes at Large includes the text of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, amendments to the Constitution, treaties with Native Americans and foreign nations, and presidential proclamations.
Within HeinOnline’s Statutes at Large library collection, researchers may browse by volume, popular name, Indian Treaty, or “Other Treaty”, which refers to the treaties entered into between the United States and another country (as stated above, treaties are found in Statutes at Large until 1948, so for those doing U.S. treaty research, we would like to remind you that HeinOnline also contains the world’s most-comprehensive resource for U.S. Treaties
The complete Statutes at Large is fully full-text searchable via a new search engine. If you’ve given up on searching HeinOnline databases because of the slow, awkward, not-so-useful old search, give the new Statutes at Large search a second look.
U.S. Federal Legislative Histories Library
Hoping to find all of the sundry documents making up a federal legislative history in one full-text searchable place?
Check out the HeinOnline U.S. Federal Legislative Histories Library, containing complete legislative histories for a number of landmark acts passed by the U.S. Congress. Compliled histories such as these were previously only available in print or microfiche or, occasionally, on LexisNexis or Westlaw.
Many of these legislative histories were only available in a few libraries. Among the first 15 legislative histories now posted on HeinOnline (more are being added each month):
- Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (6 volumes)
- Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (6 vol.)
- Copyright Act of 1976 (6 vol.) and 1909 Copyright Act (6 vol.)
- Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (3 vol.)
- North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (29 vol., 2 supplements)
- USA Patriot Act (5 vol.)
Also included is the wonderful legislative history research aid, Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories: A Bibliography of Government Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books by Nancy P. Johnson).
The Sources of Compiled Legislative History is organized by Public Law Number/Statutes at Large citation. Find your public law from the front page, click on your citation, and receive links to the full-text Statute at Large, original bill number, links to law review articles in HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library containing commentary on the legislative history of the act, and references to other compiled legislative history about the act. Here’s an example provided by HeinOnline:
For just one example of what researchers will find valuable, please follow this check out this link to this record on the Consumer Product Safety Act
On this page, you’ll find a wealth of information related to the original source of the Consumer Product Safety Act, including links to Statutes at Large and a law review article located in UCLA Law Review, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia and Frank Goodman.
Also noted on this page, references to the sources of the original legislative history about the Act can be found.
Always good to see reference tools provided along with the original document images.
Other HeinOnline databases available to the Lewis & Clark Law School community are:
