Please note: the content viewed in ProQuest® Congressional varies according to the subscriptions/purchases of individual institutions.
Legislative histories trace the development of a public law from its early consideration to its enactment, including development that spans more than one Congress.
Congress produces a variety of publications as a bill moves through the legislative process on its way to becoming a law. A compilation of these full text primary source publications produces a legislative history that is valuable to a wide variety of researchers. Publication types associated with a legislative history include the Public Law, all versions of enacted and related bills, Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and documents. All of these publication types can be used in court to determine the intent of Congress in enacting legislation in cases where the statutory language is ambiguous. Legislative histories are also used by researchers interested in government, US history, political science, public administration, international relations, and many other disciplines.
If you have access to Legislative Insight you can use that product to view enhanced and historical Legislative Histories. ProQuest Congressional provides links to Legislative Insight for users with access to that product.
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Use the Basic Search Form, Advanced Search Form, or Search By Number Form. These forms are found under the Congressional or the Legislative & Executive Publications links in the menu bar across the top of the interface. Use these search criteria:
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Each legislative history contains an abstract of the public law, bibliographic citations (title, date, collation, CIS Accession number, and Statutes at Large citation), and controlled vocabulary subject indexing.
For Legislative histories from 1998 (106th Congress) to the present, the following categories of publications are cited in each history to which they relate:
Congressional Basic: Legislative histories for laws passed since 1969 are available through ProQuest® Congressional basic subscription.
These highlights indicate what's covered as part of the basic subscription:
Legislative Insight: a more robust set of legislative histories from 1789-present is available from Legislative Insight. ProQuest Congressional provides links to Legislative Insight for users with access.
Legislative Insight offers additional content types, including Committee prints, CRS reports, miscellaneous congressional publications, and Presidential signing statements; and has unique functionality suited to legislative history research
