LIS 4362 Government Publications

The Serial Set

Today the Serial Set consists of House and Senate Reports and Documents.

Contained in the Serial Set

In older years of the Serial Set many other kinds of documents were included, especially Executive Department publications:

 

 

Indexing Congressional Publications: The Grasshopper's View

Legislative Histories

 


The easiest way to perform legislative history research is to use ProQuest Legislative Insight. When the product is complete at the end of December, 2012, it will contain all legislative histories from 1969 through present, and most important legislative histories from 1929 through 1968. After that PQ will work to place selected histories older than 1929 in the product. The product is so easy to use that I don't need to explain how to search it, but let me point out the important aspects of the results you will see.

Bills - bills are draft versions of laws. If you want to drive yourself crazy, try tracking all changes that are propsed in each bill. I can't think of the last time I needed to point a patron to various bill versions. But there are there, just in case you need them.

Congressional Record - for some reason PQ Legislative Insight incorrectly labels these "Congressional Records". You can find floor debate here. This may be useful for legislative intent purposes.

Congressional Reports - may contain legislative intent. Look for heading list: Purpose, Background, Need for Legislation, etc. Attorneys are particularly interested in reports.

Congressional Hearings - not usually of interest to attorneys, but are of great interest to social scientists.

Congressional Documents - not usually very relevant to legislative history research.

Presidential Signing Statements - the President often places restrictions on public laws as he signs them into law.

Although there is a tool in ProQuest Congressional for searching legislative histories, I do not recommend that you use it. It has been superseded by ProQuest Legislative Insight. I will give you the background of this in class.

ProQuest Legislative Insight

NOTE: Sometimes the link for Legislative Insight illustrated above does not work as well as this one.

Using Legislative Insight. For this example we will use the Tsunami Warning and Education Act.

 Durable URL: http://0-congressional.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/legisinsight?id=PL109-424&type=LEG_HIST

Examples:

I recently received this notice from the DU Faculty Senate. How can we go about finding the "extension of the federal Higher Education Act of 1965" that discusses the cost of textbooks and publisher requirements? Method #1: Look in the US Code for the original act and find amendments to the act [note, the US Code is published every 6 years with annual updates. If the law is too recent, changes will not be reflected]. Method #2: Search for a legislative history using a tool like ProQuest Legislative Insight. Method #3: Search Google for any kind of "hook" that will lead you in the right direction.

 

Statutes and Compilations

U.S. laws first show up as "slip laws". AE 2.110:[Congress-PL number] (1984 onward); GS 4.110:[Congress-PL number] (prior to 1984)
The slip laws are bound in consecutive order in United States Statutes at Large. Note that the SuDocs number for the Statutes is AE 2.111: (formerly GS 4.111:)
Note the publication history of the Statutes:


The public statutes at large of the United States of America 1789-1945
The statutes at large and treaties of the United States of America from ... 1845-1859
The statutes at large, treaties, and proclamations of the United States of America from ... 1859-1869
The statutes at large and proclamations of the United States of America from ... 1871-1873
The statutes at large, the United States from ... 1873-1936
United States Statutes at Large 1937-present

HeinOnline covers all the titles in one link.

The individual laws are codified into the U.S. Code. The U.S. Code is published officially every 6 years (2000, 2006, 2012 - that's the schedule). Annual supplements are issued in the other years. The GPO is responsible for publishing the official version. The work of codification is done by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives.

If you look at a recent public law, you can get parallel citations to the Public Law, Statutes at Large, and you can usually find out where the law has been codified.
For example, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (2006). Note from the catalog record that you can tell it is a P.L. by the SuDocs number. Take a look at the PDF version. You can see the PL number as well as the citation to Statutes at Large. In the margin you will notice the "short title" and the reference to the U.S. Code. The note in the Code will tell you further information.