Legislative Histories of Selected U.S. Laws on the Internet

 Public Law Number Listing

Commercial Legislative Histories - Public Law Number Order

 Explanatory Notes

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 listings above are to individual laws in both alphabetical and public law number order with non-commercial histories, having more detailed identifiers, listed first. 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 descrptions of the historical development and perhaps the content of the original law and its amendments. However, the lists above 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.

For 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.

Federal Reserve Board (FRB) legislative histories are generally downloaded to an LLSDC site. Other legislative histories listed can be found on the Internet.

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 Library of Covington & Burling, a large Washington D.C. law firm. 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." Since the above links to Hein are to its general login page, each listing by poular name and public law number also notes the actual title's beginning so the reader will be able to find the law after he or she logs into Heinonline.org. See Heinonline.org - Subscribers - U.S. Federal Legislative History Library.

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) as well as CIS abstracts of all legislative histories going back to 1989 with links to bill track chronologies, committee reports, Congressional Record pages, bill texts, and abstacts to Congressional hearings. Lexis also has word-search capabilities in the those databases as well as the complete U.S. Statutes at Large in PDF. Lexis is accesioble by subscription or credit card. See Lexis.com - Legal - Federal Legal - Legislative Histories & Materials.

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-permament 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  March 18, 2009.

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Note on PDF Documents:

Depending on the formatting and arrangement of each of the items in this collection, many documents are provided only in Adobe's Portable Document Format. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed on your computer in order to view these documents.