Legal Research

Legislative History Made Easy

By Diane Murley

If you are doing legislative history research on a U.S. Public Law, the best place to start is with a compiled legislative history. As the name implies, a compiled legislative history brings together all the legislative documents related to a particular Law. Compiled legislative histories may be published in print or electronically.

To see if the law library owns a compiled legislative history on your topic, do a keyword search of the library catalog for words from the name of the law plus the words legislative history. For example, a search for tax legislative history will retrieve legislative histories of tax laws.

To see if there is an electronic compiled legislative history, start with Legislative Histories of Selected U.S. Laws on the Internet from the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C. This newly updated page lists Laws by popular name and Public Law number, with links to free and commercial websites, including Westlaw, LexisNexis, and HeinOnline. LexisNexis and Westlaw links require a password, available to ASU law students and faculty, but HeinOnline is available from any computer on the ASU network. Check the explanatory notes if you have trouble accessing any of the sites.

Hat tip to BoleyBlogs! for this research tip.

Full post as published by Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).