Research Guides: Federal Legislation: Legislative Histories

Legislative Histories

"Legislative histories cite congressional publications and daily Congressional Record debate associated with each public law. Referenced publications may include congressional reports, hearings, documents, and/or prints. A legislative history compilation enables researchers to trace the development of a law from its earliest consideration to its signing by the President." (LN Congressional)

In addition, legislative histories may be found in books. See the section titled: Legislative Histories: Books

Congressional Publications
Legislative histories from 1984 forward contain numerous hypertext links to abstracts for congressional publications, and legislative histories from 1995 forward contain hypertext links to the daily Congressional Record.
ProQuest Legislative Insight
Federal legislative history service providing access to full text publications created by Congress during the process leading up to the enactment of U.S. Public Laws. Documents include bills (all versions), legislative reports, documents, CRS reports, committee prints, speeches in the Congressional Record and presidential signing statements. Currently, Parts A, C, and D are available which include legislative histories from 1929-2014.
HeinOnline U.S. Federal Legislative Histories Library
The Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories Database (1789 -2002) is derived from the looseleaf publication /Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories: A Bibliography of Government Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books/. All compilations for major laws are included in the database with the following exceptions: appropriations measures; ceremonial matters; laws that extend the life of an agency or authority; and laws that affect small numbers of persons or specific regions of the country. The sources for these compilations include congressional documents, legal periodicals, treatises and looseleaf services. The Legislative History Title Collection is a collection of full-text legislative histories on some of the most important and historically significant legislation of our time.
Notes: PDF printing requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or later.

Legislative Histories: Books

Use the Catalog (Worldcat) to locate books providing legislative histories.

Conduct a search using keywords and add legislative histor* to your keywords/name of act...

Using histor* will retrieve both legislative history or legislative histories.

Examples:
voting rights act legislative histor*

pollution legislative histor*

americans with disabilities act legislative histor*