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Finding a Compiled Legislative History

Identifying and collecting legislative history documents is a time consuming process. So first, look to see if someone else has compiled the materials (or citations to those materials) for the legislation in question. Generally, compiled legislative histories exist only for major legislation.

• Consult Nancy P. Johnson, Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories (Law Reference KF 4.J64 1979). All published legislative histories, in print or online, are listed by public law number. It includes an index of names of public laws as well as an author/title index. For each public law, the author notes whether the compiled legislative history includes the actual documents, analysis of the documents, or only citations to those documents.

• Consult Bernard D. Reams, Federal Legislative Histories (Law Reference KF 42.2 1994) which includes legislative histories for laws passed between 1796 (4th Cong., 1st Sess.) and 1990 (101st Cong., 2d Sess.). Search the indexes by author of the document, popular name of the public law, Congressional session law numbers before 1901, public law numbers after 1900, and bill number.

• United States Code Congressional & Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.) reprints selected committee reports and provides the bill number, date of enactment, and a list of all committee reports for all laws passed by Congress. This is a good source for quickly finding the most important committee reports for laws enacted since 1944.

  Print: Pappas Reading Room (1941 to date)
  Online: Westlaw (1948 to date).

Some compiled legislative histories are available online.

• LexisNexis has selective legislative histories for bankruptcy, estate, tax, securities, environmental, and banking laws.
• Westlaw has selective legislative histories, prepared by the law firm of Arnold & Porter, for pensions, environment, banking, bankruptcy, and securities.
  • From the Westlaw Directory: U.S. Federal Materials > Legislative History & Bill Tracking > Legislative History-Arnold & Porter Legislative History for Specific Acts.
• HeinOnline's Federal Legislative History Library provides Nancy Johnson's Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories as well as the Legislative History Title Collection is a collection of full-text legislative histories on selected important and historically significant legislation.

Page maintained by Steve Donweber
Last updated: August 2006