U.S. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION:
LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION

• Overview of the Process
• Background Information
• Legislative History
• Introduction of Legislation
• Committee Hearings
• Committee Prints and CRS Reports
• Reported Bill
• Floor Debate (Congressional Record)
• Votes
• President
• Finding Laws

Overview of the Process
How Our Laws Are Made, issued by the House of Representatives, describes the steps in the consideration of a bill and the documents produced at each step of the legislative process.

Background Information

• CQ Researcher, Congress and the Nation, and CQ Weekly
  All three of these resources can be searched together through the same interface.
  • CQ Researcher provides analytical reports of high-profile public policy issues. The reports include references to legislative actions and materials, but are not comprehensive legislative histories. CQ Researcher reports include many citations to secondary sources, such as public opinion polls and think tank analyses. A CQ Researcher report on any given topic may not be updated recently enough to capture the latest legislative activity on the issue.
  • Congress and the Nation chronicles and provides analysis of legislative activity for each Congress. It is a good source for finding a narrative of events on a particular issue in a specific Congress.
  • CQ Weekly is a newsmagazine covering Congressional activities, including status of bills, votes and amendments, floor and committee activity, and political context of legislation. It is especially useful for researching legislation that is either not described or not up-to-date in CQ Researcher and Congress and the Nation.

• National Journal - similar to CQ Weekly.

• Find information about a senator or representative

Legislative History

Researching legislation is considerably easier with an already-compiled and published legislative history. A legislative history traces the chronology of the legislation and provides citations to the various documents relevant to the bill. Try these sources for published legislative histories; note that not every enacted bill has a published legislative history.

Introduction of Legislation

When a bill or resolution is introduced in the House or Senate it is assigned a bill or resolution number, the text is printed, and it is assigned to a committee. Full text of bills and resolutions can be found online:

• Thomas (101st Congress [1989]-present)
• House and Senate (best for currently active legislation; may link to the bill text on Thomas)
• ProQuest Congressional (101st Congress [1989]-present)
• Government Printing Office (103rd Congress [1993]-present)
• OpenCongress (111th Congress [2009]-present)
• The American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, (House: 6th-42nd Congress [1799-1872], Senate: 16th-42nd Congress [1819-1872])

For bills and resolutions not available online:

• 73rd Congress (1933-present), on microfiche, in the Yale Law Library
• Pre-1933, on microfilm, may be borrowed from the Center for Research Libraries (search for Bills and Resolutions).
• See also: Sources for the Text of Congressional Bills and Resolutions.

Committee Hearings

Congressional committee hearings contain the testimony of government officials and private individuals invited to appear before the committee to argue for or against passage of a bill. 

• ProQuest Congressional
  Look for "Hearings -- Digital Collection" in the search results list.
• Government Printing Office
  Selected hearings, primarily 105th Congress (1997)-present.

See this list of resources for audio and video of hearings.

Committee Prints and CRS Reports

Committee prints, written by congressional committee staff, provide background information to aid members of Congress in their consideration of a bill. Available: ProQuest Congressional (1830-present).

Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, which offer in-depth analysis of public policy issues, are available from several sources.

Reported Bill

If a committee votes favorably on a bill, it is "reported" from that committee to the full House or Senate.  The bill is accompanied by an actual report, which explains the purpose of the bill, reviews past Congressional actions on the subject, specifies how the bill changes existing law and its expected effects on the federal budget and the national economy.  Reports are identified by Congress and report number.  Reports, along with Congressional documents, eventually get compiled into the Serial Set.

Tracing Congressional activity on a bill:

• THOMAS (101st Congress [1989]-present). The “Bill Summary and Status” section of each bill provides a list of all Congressional actions on the bill.
• History of Bills lists legislative actions on bills that are reported in the Congressional Record. Available online:
  • 98th Congress (1983)-present, U.S. Government Printing Office
  • 43rd Congress (1873)-present, HeinOnline (browse to the Index for each session; History of Bills is part of the index)
  • Congressional Record through 1994 is also available in print at the Social Science Library; volumes 1995-present can be requested through Orbis.

• Calendars of the House of Representatives and History of Legislation. See the "History of Bills and Resolutions" section in the House Calendar, which covers both House and Senate bills.
• House and Senate Journals

Floor Debate (Congressional Record)

• Speeches on the floor of the House and Senate are published in the Congressional Record, issued daily during sessions of Congress.
• Congressional Record (and its predecessors, which go by various titles) is available online from HeinOnline, GPO Access, and ProQuest Congressional (dates vary among these resources).
• Volumes up through 1994 are also available in print at the Social Science Library.
• There are two editions of Congressional Record: the daily edition and the bound (permanent) edition.
• What is the Congressional Record? (published by ProQuest) is an excellent, brief introduction; well worth reading for anyone planning to do research using the Record.

President
Sources for Presidential signing statements, which may accompany either a signed or vetoed bill: 

• Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1992-present (Government Printing Office)
• Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1965-present (HeinOnline, Yale subscription database)
• American Presidency Project, 1929-present (UC Santa Barbara)

  Laws

• Laws are termed “slip laws” when they are first published. Available:
  Government Printing Office (104th Congress [1995]-present)
• At the end of each session of Congress, slip laws are compiled into volumes called the Statutes at Large, and are known as "session laws." The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted. Available:
  ProQuest Congressional (1789-present)
• Every six years, laws get published in the U.S. Code, which is a subject arrangement of the law. Available:
  Government Printing Office (1994-present)
  

Although the sources above allow you to search either by keyword or by citation (e.g., Public Law number, Statutes at Large or U.S. Code citation), sometimes you will have only the popular name of a law and will want an easy way to find out its citation. In those cases, search:

• ProQuest Congressional - click "Popular Name" on the Statutes at Large search form.
• Popular Names of Acts in the U.S. Code (Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute)
  Includes names of laws no longer in force.

For more information on publication of laws, see Public and Private Laws (Government Printing Office).

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