Congressional enactments are seldom free of ambiguity. In interpreting
statutes, the courts and federal agencies often refer to the statutes
legislative history to determine a statute's meaning and application.
There are two types of legislative histories. The first follows a bill's
progress through Congress. The second relates to the Congressional intent and
meaning.
The following two resources can be used to follow a bill's progress
through Congress:
To determine the intent of a statute, researchers examine
evidence gathered from hearings and reports made by the committee in charge of
the legislation and from floor debates found in the
Congressional Record. It is available electronically through GPO Access from 1994 to present. The Congressional Record
is also available from 1873 to present in print in the Wirtz Labor Library. On WESTLAW and LEXIS you can find the
Congressional Record from March 1985 forward.
Additional resources are to the
Congressional Hearings and to the
Congressional Reports, provided by GPO Access from the 104th Congress (1995-96) to present.
The Wirtz Labor Library has selected hearings and reports in both hard copy and
microfiche from before the 104th (1995-96) Congress. Users have access to both
the online catalog and the old print (card)
catalog to find the titles that they need.
Often the end user doesn't know the exact name of the hearing(s) or
report(s) they are looking for. To aid in this part of the research the Wirtz
Labor Library has recently purchased a series of indexes that will help the end
user identify these items.
Library users can now find information prior to 1970 by using the CIS
US Serial Set Index, the US Congressional Committee Hearings Index,
the CIS Congressional Committee Prints Index, CIS Index to
Unpublished US Senate Committee Hearings and CIS Index to Unpublished US
House of Representative Committee Hearings. From 1970 forward the Library
has had and will continue to maintain a subscription to the
CIS Index.
Since 1984, CIS Index has included a legislative history volume
detailing all the different items that comprise each public law's legislative
history.
Another source of legislative history in the Wirtz Library is the
United States Code Congressional and Administrative News often referred
to as USCCAN. The Library has this title from 1945 forward. This title reprints
the entire law as enacted and includes selected text from Congressional
reports.
In addition to these general sources, the Wirtz Labor Library has a
number of compiled legislative histories included in the Wirtz Labor Law
Library's online catalog.
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