Finding Legislative History for Free
The best resources for finding legislative history without paying for it are Thomas (thomas.loc.gov) and GPO Access (www.gpoaccess.gov). Before using these resources, however, it is important to know the time periods they cover.
Thomas (named for Thomas Jefferson) is a service of the Library of Congress. It provides access to legislative information only. Its coverage is as follows:
- Bill Summary and Status -- 1973-present
- Public Law history and summary -- 1973-present
- Congressional Bills full-text -- 1989-present
- Congressional Record full-text -- 1989-present
- Congressional Reports -- 1995-present
GPO Access is sponsored by the U.S. Government Printing Office. It provides access to official Legislative, Executive, and Judicial information. With regard to legislative resources, the scope of GPO Access is as follows:
- History of Bills -- 1983-present
- Congressional Bills full-text -- 1993-present
- Public and Private Laws full-text -- 1995-present
- Congressional Record full-text -- 1994-present
- Congressional Reports -- 1995-present
- Congressional Hearings -- 1997-present
NOTE: Generally, search results in Thomas and GPO Access are ordered according to relevance when searching by a word or phrase (click here for Thomas' ranking methodology; here for GPO Access'). Two exceptions are that when using the Advanced Search feature and searching for Bill Summary and Status in Thomas, results are ordered chronologically.
How do I find legislative history when all I have is the following:
- bill or public law number (e.g. S. 507 or Public Law 106-53),
- the name or part of the name of the legislation, or
- just some information about the legislation?
- Use Thomas (select radio button for Bill Summary and Status in order to find legislative history)
- Using GPO Access
- HINT: you can retrieve all of the documents associated with the legislative history in Thomas just by clicking on the links in the history summary.
How do I find legislative history when all I have is limited information, like the sponsor of the bill or the date of introduction?
- Using Thomas
- Using GPO Access (only for sponsor)
How do I find the full text of the published version of a bill or the official version of a public law?
- Using Thomas (Bills, Public Laws)
- Using GPO Access (Bills, Public Laws) (HINT: click here to find abbreviations applicable to GPO Access' full-text bills and public laws service)
- Browse bills (by Congress No.) on GPO Access
- Browse public laws (by Congress No.) on GPO Access
HINT -- You can find legislative history, with relevant citations, at the end of the official version of every public law.
Once I find legislative history, how do I find the documents that the history refers to (for example, floor debates from the Congressional Record, Senate and House reports, hearings, and the like)?
- How do I find material in the Congressional Record?
- Using Thomas
- Using GPO Access (You can also browse the Congressional Record with GPO Access)
- How do I find Senate and House reports?
- Using Thomas
- Using GPO Access
- How do I find Senate and House hearings?
- Using Thomas (House, Senate) (Thomas only provides a link to Committee web pages. It does not maintain a separate database for hearings.)
- Using GPO Access
- NOTE -- Historical Congressional documents can be found in the Congressional Serial Set, which is available on-line in a searchable full-text version from LexisNexis (Coverage: 1817-1920) (this is a pay service). It is also available in print.
Page maintained by Steve Donweber
Last updated: December 2006