Knowing the Record:
Tasks for conducting and writing a legislative history
The Task Outlines provided in this section will help you create communications that effectively meet the expectations described below.
As you conduct research in government records, you can feel as if you are drowning in information, classification systems, procedure names, and document types.
Also, if you start into records searching without knowing the underlying legislative process, you will quickly become lost.
If you need to learn about (or would like to review) the legislative process, government record types, and standard tools for researching government records, begin with Task 1.
If you already know federal legislative procedure well, or if you are tracing state law, omit Task 1 and go on to Task 2.
Task 1: Review the legislative process
Use the reviews of the process listing below to learn more about the policy process and researching policy documents. Bookmark your favorite and return to it as often as needed.
-
House: How Our Laws Are Made
(by House of Representatives Parliamentarian)
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/lawsmade.toc.html - Senate: Enactment of a Law
(by Senate Parliamentarian)
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/enactment/enactlawtoc.html - The Legislative Process
(by House of Representatives Information Office)
http://www.house.gov/house/Tying_it_all.html - The Legislative Process
(Indiana University Center on Congress)
http://congress.indiana.edu/learn_about/legislative.htm - The Legislative
Process
(Capitol Advantage)
http://congress.org/congressorg/issues/basics/?style=legis
Task 2: Conduct Research
Do you want to find a history or to write one? Decide early whether your purpose is served by an already published history or you must produce one.
For single laws, commercial research services such as the Congressional Information Service publish legislative histories with varying levels of detail. To look for a published history for a single law, try these sources:
Law Librarians' Society of Washington DC Legislative Sourcebook
CIS/Annual (Year), Legislative Histories of US Pubic Laws
You are unlikely to find published legislative histories for an issue. They are typically produced by, or for, the people who want the information.
As a rule of thumb, federal records are generally accessible online and in research libraries. State records are generally less so, but an individual state’s records might be available online or, more likely, in the print archives of the state’s library. Local government records are generally not available without going to the municipality to ask about access to records. Few municipalities put their records online.
Major tools for finding federal and state records are provided by government information services, either free or by subscription.
Free services can be accessed by any computer with World Wide Web access.
Subscription services are accessed via the Web by authorized users of facilities provided by a subscriber such as a university library.
From your computer at home and in many public libraries, you can freely access federal records back to 1970 (and link to state record archives) through:
GPO Access (Government Printing Office)
Other free portals to numerous federal government web sites that link to records are:
Federal
Web Locator
(Information Center
at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology.
Federal
Government Documents on the Web
(University of Michigan Documents
Center)
US Government Documents
(Mansfield University)
For state legislatures and local government, these are good portals:
State
and Local Governments
(Library of Congress)
Government Resources on the Internet: State, Local, International
(Virtual Chase)
Law Librarians Society of Washington DC Legislative Sourcebook: State Legislatures, State Laws, State Regulations
An excellent subscription service that librarians consult for comprehensive federal legislative information is Congressional, based on the (print) Congressional Information Service (CIS).
Both free and subscription services are available in federal depository libraries. Those are libraries that make United States Government Printing Office materials publicly available in the library’s region. Find a depository library near you in the Federal Depository Library Locator.
Libraries offer a special advantage. Librarians! For professional, skilled, and time-saving assistance in legislative research, always ask a librarian.
General Tips for Using Government Information Libraries
Depository libraries have federal government records in all available forms—digital, print, and microfiche. Depending on what you want to know, you might need all three. Online access to digital records is convenient for recent records. But print and microfiche are still important, too, for several reasons. Records prior to the l970s are not yet available online, and some will never be. You can miss a lot of legislative history if you search online, only. Also, print compilations are sometimes easier to use, because they are well supplemented by indexes and other finding aids.
When using a tool new to you, check first for finding aids such as an index. You will save much time this way. (Heads up: Subscription services have more indexes than do free services.)
Take detailed notes as you go. Jot down contextual information as well as target information. Jot names of people, committees, subcommittees, bill or law citations mentioned in the target record.
Why? If your first search method fails, these notes can re-start your search. They give you alternative ways to search.
Use what you know to find what you want. For example, if she jots down key terms, citations, names, dates as she works in a database of government records, the student intern researching elder health care is prepared to search by any of these alternatives:
>>by subjects discussed in the record, e.g. elder health care
>>by citation (number-and-letter 'addresses') of a particular legislative record in a system of citation, e.g. H.R. 1091-106 for a particular House of Representatives bill
>>by names, dates, committees, or other elements of a legislative process e.g., the name of the senator sponsoring a bill.
In other words, she could find legislation on elder health care by subject (elder health care, nursing home care, Medicare, and so on); or by citation (H.R. 1091-106); or by legislative process information (Senator Ted Kennedy; hearing witness Donna Shalala, Department of Health and Human Services; Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions).
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Task 3: Write the legislative history document
To write your legislative history, begin by using the General Method.
You can re-use the thinking that went into planning your research. Use it to plan your legislative history document. Let your intended reader’s needs for the information guide your selection of information for the history.
Formulate your message
What is the message of a legislative history? It is your conclusion formed after consulting the record.
The history’s scope is set by the purpose (whether you are writing a law history or an issue history) and by the amount of information required to support your message. In any case, you must organize information to support the message. Organizational options include chronology (to show developments over time), significance (to highlight influential legislation), and trend (to show a pattern).
Choose a Genre
If no form is prescribed for presenting the results of your research, you might choose to use the following standard reporting format for professional and technical communication:
an overview concisely summarizes both the message and the key information in the document
sub-sections provide summaries of information
sub-headings label each sub-section
citation is provided along with each sub-section.
Provide Citations
Citation is very important in a legislative history. Both the history’s credibility and the user’s (as well as the researcher’s) convenience demand that all sources be easy to re-locate, for confirmation and referral. Citation is the means of doing so. Full citation provides three kinds of information about a source: what type of record it is; how it is classified in a system of documentation; who publishes it (a commercial research service or government). For government records, full citation includes all the elements that help to identify a source. In legislative research, full citation, or government style, is preferred over terse citation, or legal style, that provides only an abbreviated source identifier, number in a system of documentation, and date.
If either government style or legal style is prescribed for you, use that style. If not, choose the appropriate style and use it exclusively. Do not mix styles.
Here is a list of the elements in full citation or government style for citing federal or state legislation:
issuing agency (e.g., house, number, session, year)
title (document number and name; long name may be abbreviated)
edition or version
imprint (city, publisher, date of publication)
series (e.g., serial list of publications)
notes (in parentheses, add anything not already included in the citation that helps to locate the document)
Here are two illustrations of government style:
U.S. House. 101st Congress, 1st Session (1989). H.R. l946, A Bill to Authorize the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to Provide Home, Respite, and Dental Care. Washington: Government Printing Office, l990. (GPO Microfiche no. 393, coordinate C13).
U.S. House. 104th Congress, 1st session (l995). "H.R. 3, A Bill to Control Crime." Version: 1; Version Date: 2/9/93. (Full Text of Bills: Congressional Universe Online Service. Bethesda, MD: Congressional Information Service).
In the second illustration, the final element shows that the source is proprietary, or a commercial research service publication available to paying subscribers.
If you need more help on citing sources, refer to Resources for Citing Sources on the Related Links and Resources page.
Review and Revise
Remember to check your final product against the standard Communication Checklists.