Federal Legislative History Made Simple: Links for more detail

Links to websites useful for legislative history research

To use many legislative history sources, you need to know the Public Law Number. 

To find the Public Law (P.L.) number:

• If you have the code section, such as 17 USCA 107, then go to the parenthetical at end of code section (sometimes known as "Credit" or "History")   
  - click on image below




• If you have the name of the Act, then go to the Popular Name Table

There are many excellent in depth guides that give more detailed explanations and directions for finding the specific legislative history documents (bills, hearings, reports, debates, presidential documents, public laws).  Several recommended guides are listed below.

For a single page on where to access legislative history documents, see Quick Guide box, below.

If you click on the links in the pdf, you will see the linked page in the box above. To return to the Quick Guide, refresh the web page in the address bar.

There are lots of good guides on the Web.  Try a Google search for a specific act or topic.  Listed below are the results for a general search.  You can change the text to customize the search.  For example add the terms erisa to the search box to look for legislative histories for ERISA.