Legislative History Research Overview

 A. What is a legislative history?

It is the official documentary record of the passage of a proposed statute - often involving multiple bills or resolutions - through the successive stages of the legislative process. At the federal level of government this process formally commences with the introduction of a measure in Congress by a Senator or Representative and unless terminating short of enactment, the most common outcome, concludes with a Presidential signing into law or veto. For major initiatives, however, the documentary record frequently begins before the introduction of a bill, perhaps with a background Congressional investigative study or committee hearing from a previous Congress or a draft of proposed legislation by the President.

 B. What are the major purposes of legislative history research and how do they affect the scope and types of material selected for consultation?

1. The legislative history record of a statute is consulted by the courts, Congress, government agencies, legal scholars and others in an effort to clarify the legislative intent of Congress when the meaning of a legislative provision cannot be gleaned from the language of the statute itself. Although a legislative history is not legally binding it may influence judicial opinion or the course of future Congressional lawmaking. It may also serve the broader purpose of illuminating the social and political context from which a statute emerged and so lead a researcher to consult not only the full complement of official legislative history publications but also the sometimes insightful commentary and analysis of unofficial secondary sources as well, e.g., law reviews, monographic studies, newspaper articles and blogs.

2. If interest is limited to the meaning of a particular section or subsection of a statute, a researcher may choose to consult only those Congressional sources that treat specific provisions in detail, primarily committee reports and to a lesser extent House and Senate floor debate from the Congressional Record. This is the most common approach to legislative history investigation employed by the courts and those seeking to influence judicial interpretation of statutes.

3. Sometimes the interest of a legislative history researcher is narrower still, concerned with the documentary trail of a current bill but only as an indicator of its present status in the legislative processs. Has it been reported out of committee? Has it been debated or amended on the floor of the House or Senate? Alternatively, the focus of interest could well be the documentary record, not of a potential statute, but that of an unenacted legislaive measure from a past Congress.In either of these research scenarios it is “bill tracking” sources that should be consulted.

 C. What is the typical sequence of steps in the Congressional legislative process and what are the legislative history documents normally associated with each step?

Comprehensive accounts of the rules and procedures governing the Congressional legislative process are provided by the House and Senate Parliamentarians and a summarizing overview of how a bill becomes a law more detailed than that offered by the above table is available at the website of the U.S. House of Representatives. Analogous state-level legislative process information is typically available at legislative body websites of individual states.

 D. How are legislative history records organized?

Official legislative history records for a statute are compiled in terms of its Public Law number, a component of its Congressional session law citation, rather than the specific sections of the U.S. Code it has added or amended. The Public Law number can be obtained from a popular name table if a researcher begins with the name of the statute. It can otherwise be found at the end of the Code sections for which the statute is the sole or a contributing source. For measures falling short of enactment or still in the legislativeprocess, documentation is provided in terms of bill number and Congress, eg., H.R. 16, 107th Cong., (2001) or S. 125, 108th Cong. (2003).