Legislative Histories of U.S. Laws on the Internet:
Explanatory Notes

The legislative history site to non-commercial and to commercial legislative histories is jointly sponsored by the Society's Federal Law Libraries Special Interest Section and Legislative Research Special Interest Section. Many of the non-commercial histories come from Federal agency libraries with special thanks to the U.S. libraries at the Department of Commerce, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Department of Justice. It is hoped that other agencies and firms will add their collections to it in the future. Listed commercial legislative history products are from Westlaw, LexisNexis and HeinOnline and are briefly described below, along with the new legislative history products from Proquest.

Federal legislative histories are generally considered compilations of related documents to a specific U.S. public law that precede the law's enactment and that is how the term is used here.   The chronology of the bill's (or bills') development is normally set out as well, including related legislation in previous Congresses. Legislative histories assist Federal agencies and the courts to interpret the Congressional intent of various Federal laws or a law's provisions. The related listings to these notes are to individual laws in both alphabetical and public law number order with non-commercial histories having more detailed identifiers rather than just the popular name and public law number. The term "legislative history" is also, at times, given to related Congressional documents of both the original act and its subsequent amendments or to special collections of related documents on a particular topic like tax law or environmental law. These special collections are listed at the conclusion of the above lists. Finally, the term "legislative history" is sometimes given to mere descriptions of the historical development and perhaps the content of the original law and its amendments. However, the related lists to these notes only include histories with compiled Congressional documents related to a law and do not include those that only describe the history of a law.

Legislative history construction is a craft and relevant documents may not always be included, and sometimes, of course, not all of the documents to a history are available. Usually a legislative history includes the related public law, standing committee and conference reports, debates/discussion from the Congressional Record, various proposed bills in different versions, committee hearings, and perhaps a presidential signing statement, but more documents from different agencies and earlier congresses could be included as well. See Practitioner's Guide.

Many selected legislative histories that are listed and linked are available on the free Internet. However, certain Federal Reserve Board (FRB) legislative histories have been downloaded to an LLSDC site.

For U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) legislative histories the pin number or word to the catalog is what you make it, however, your Adobe Reader software must be at least version 6.0 or higher in order to view the PDF documents contained therein. The Pop-up blocker function on your browser should also be turned off.

In 2011, selected U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) legislative histories, produced by its library staff, have been placed on a public Internet site by the Department. These histories are being gradually added and individually linked to the LLSDC site.

Library of Congress (LoC) bill histories, or list of actions, and bill summaries are prepared by its Congressional Research Service and made available from 1973 (93rd Congress) to the present through THOMAS, the Library's legislative database. Senate bill numbers begin with an "S." and House of Representatives bill numbers begin with an "H.R." From 1989 (101st Congress) to the present the text of bills and resolutions are available on THOMAS and linked to each of its bill status/summary reports. From 1995 (104th Congress) forward committee reports are linked to the those reports and from 1999 (106th Congress) forward Congressional Record pages are also linked to the list of actions on each bill report. Currently, congressional hearings and Presidential signing statements are about the only legislative history documents not linked to THOMAS bill reports.

The legislative histories in PDF on Heinonline.org come from a variety of sources including those previously published in paper by the William S. Hein Company, Inc. and by the U.S. Government Printing Office. However's Hein's collection is largely growing through the digitization of the legislative histories compiled in paper by the certain law firms. Note that the list of histories on Heinonline is in alphabetical order, but frequently the titles are not those of the popular title to the public law, but rather the title of the book or compilation such as the "Legislative History of the Toxic Substances Control Act" or "Kaminstein Legislative History Project on the Copyright Act of 1976." However, the related links to HeinOnline are direct links to each history but may require an initial username and password. Searching for certain words or phrases in a specific history may require accessing various volumes or parts to the history and there is also a "Search this Title" tool to search specific or multiple legislative history titles. Besides its Legislative History Library, Heinonline also has dozens of legislative histories in its new "Taxation & Economic Reform in America" Library, particularly those related taxation, banking, and securities law and these have been linked as well. In addition, Heinonline's Legislative History Library has online the publication, "Sources of Complied Legislative Histories" by Nancy Johnson.

LexisNexis legislative histories have complete word-search capabilities as well as navigational markers to pull up individual documents. Although the database has only about 15 specific U.S. public law legislative histories that are searchable in this manner (largely environmental laws) there are a few combined collections (bankruptcy, tax and appropriations). The Lexis CIS Legislative Histories (via Proquest) file has information on all U.S. public laws going back to 1970 with links to CIS abstracts of related Committee reports, hearings, and prints (from 1970) and to the full text of related Congressional Record debate pages (from 1985 - daily edition), bill track chronologies (from 1989), text of bills (from 1989), and committee reports (from 1995). Lexis also has word-search capabilities in the those databases (but not across documents within each history) as well as the complete U.S. Statutes at Large in PDF. Lexis is accessible by subscription or credit card. See Lexis.com - Legislation & Politics - U.S. Congress - Legislative Histories.

Until recently most of Westlaw's comprehensive legislative histories of specific U.S. laws (some 31) have come largely from the law firm of Arnold and Porter. They are all word-searchable using Westlaw's search software. However, since 2007 Westlaw has been digitizing into PDF the more than 22,000 legislative histories compiled by the Government Accountability Office Library (see GAO letter regarding contract per FOIA request) and now has some 20,000 completed primarily from the 67th through 103rd Congresses. This is a premium Westlaw database file (FED-LH) and each PDF document accessed may entail an additional charge depending on the subscription contract. Each legislative history may have multiple parts and multiple screens with links to related documents arranged in reverse chronological order. The FED-LH file has a template to access specific laws and documents and once accessed, by clicking on "Locate in Result" users are taken to another template where words or phrases can be entered to search those terms within documents of the history accessed (after deactivating Preference - Document Display - Display Result List when search completes) with the resulting list showing the entered words highlighted.  In addition to the FED-LH file, Westlaw's standard legislative history file (LH) has committee reports and joint explanatory statements from 1948 and all committee reports from 1970. Also Westlaw has a legislative history template to public laws that gathers related documents it has just by entering the public law number. And finally Westlaw has a number of collected legislative histories on specialized topics. Westlaw is accessible by subscription or credit card. See Westlaw.com - Directory - U.S. Federal Materials - Legislative History. 

At the end of 2010, Proquest purchased from LexisNexis its CIS products (now called Proquest Congressional) which include abstracts, indices and full text in digital format of all Congressional reports, documents, prints, and hearings from 1789 to the present. In addition the CIS collection includes legislative history information to all U.S. public laws from 1970 to the present with a substantial amount of links to the full text of the related documents in each legislative history. The full text links encompass related Congressional reports, hearings and prnts (from 1970), related debates from the daily Congressional Record (from 1985 via Lexis), and related bills and bill chronologies (from 1989 via Lexis). In addition, Proquest has begun a new service, called Proquest Legislative Insight, that offers comprehensive legislative histories (over 6,000) and links with full text searching for most all U.S. public laws from 107th Congress to the present (2001+) and from the 87th Congress through the 92nd Congress (1961-1972) with plans for more Congresses to be added in the future.

Public law numbers that uniquely identify a U.S. law have been assigned to U.S. statutes since 1908. The first number identifies the two year Congress and the second number is chronologically assigned to laws as they are enacted. However, it was not until 1957 that public law numbers were officially used for citation purposes. Before that time chapter numbers, for each congressional session, had been assigned to both public and private laws with a "statute" containing all the chapters in a particular congressional session. Thus many laws might have the same chapter number, even within the same congress. From 1995 to the present the text of public laws are available in PDF from the U.S. Government Printing Offices's databases, FDsys or GPO Access.

The date of a public law is the day that the President signs it into law or the date when both congressional chambers override his veto. It is also the laws's effective date unless provisions within the law indicate otherwise.

The U.S. Statutes At Large contains all the public and private laws of the United States enacted by Congress since 1789. The first number of a statute citation identifies the volume number of the U.S. Statutes at Large (currently a volume number is assigned to each congressional session) followed by the beginning page number for a particular law (or title or section within a law). See U.S. Statutes At Large: Documents and Information Included

The United States Code (USC) is an updated subject arrangement of all general and permanent laws of United States still in force. It does not include annual appropriations, name changes on public buildings, repealed laws, and other local or non-permanent matters. The USC was originally enacted in 1926 as "prima facie" evidence of the law, not positive law. On the face of it, the U.S. Code is the law of that land, but it is rebuttable by the presentation of prior statutes at variance with it. However, over time about half the 50 titles of the U.S. Code have been enacted into positive law while repealing related prior laws. The first number in a USC citation is the title and the second number is generally the section number. Provisions of public laws assigned as notes to sections in the USC also have the force of law as do statutory provisions omitted as unnecessary from the Code, but not repealed. See United States Code: Historical Outline and Explanatory Notes.

The Office of the Law Revision Counsel in the U.S. House Representatives is empowered to assign Code cites to new statutory provisions, to prepare the official U.S. Code for publication, and to prepare non-positive law titles of the U.S. Code for enactment (2 USC § 285 et. seq.). The links to the USC on this page are to those presented by the Legal Information Institute of the Cornell Law School, which obtains its data in various releases from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. However, regardless of the release date, all information is updated in January of each year and it is generally one and one half to three years behind the current date. To check if a provision has changed see the U.S. Code Classification Tables published on the Web by the Office. Generally, only the primary U.S. Code cite of a particular law is listed for each of the above laws.

Links to the current Code of Federal Regualtions (CFR) is to the unofficial Beta site (e-CFR) on GPO Access, not to its annual CFR site. Agency regulations, promulgated pursuant to law, are first published in the Federal Register in proposed or final form where they are accompanied by explanations in the preamble. The matter in the CFR is just the finalized text of the regulations. The first number of a CFR cite is to the title and the second is to the CFR part. As with USC cites usually only one primary CFR cite is listed with the above public laws. See: A Research Guide to the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations.

Maintained by Rick McKinney (rick.mckinney@frb.gov), Assistant Law Librarian, Federal Reserve Board Law Library. Last updated on  September 22, 2011.