Sources Which Identify Legislative History Materials
Various sources exist to identify and locate the documents that make up the legislative history of a federal public law. Some sources are more complete than others and a source that works well for one project, may not work as well on another. They also range in price from free to very expensive.
Legislative Insight Legislative Insight provides legislative histories, with full-text documents. It contains over 27,000 laws including some enacted as far back as 1789. It only includes Congressional publications that are related to a bill that was enacted into law.
ProQuest Congressional contains Congressional publications regardless of whether or not they are related to a bill that was enacted into law. It also contains research reports of the Congressional Research Service.
Authored by a varied of sources, these compilations are composed of the text of the final public law, House and Senate bill variations, Congressional hearings, House and Senate reports, and more.
- GovInfo.govFree resource containing authenticated federal documents from all parts of the government. Govinfo.gov is a great resource for pulling up a known document; it is not a source for compiling a legislative history.
The last page of the Public Law will also identify some of the documents in the legislative history. See Public Law 112-141: