Legislation is usually referred to a committee after introduction, according to its subject matter. Often a committee will further refer the legislation to one of its subcommittees. The subcommittees may request reports from government agencies or departments, hold hearings, mark up the bill (meet to propose changes), and then report the legislation to the full committee. The full committee may take similar action, with or without prior subcommittee consideration, and report the legislation to its full chamber (i.e., the House or Senate).
Complete list of House Committees.
Complete list of Senate Committees.
Don't forget that you can always search the House of Representatives website or the U.S. Senate website to find information about the different Committees, the members of the Committees, their hearings, schedules, and reports.
There are three types of hearings: legislative hearings, where committees and subcommittees discuss the particulars of a bill; oversight hearings, where a general topic or issue is discussed; or investigative hearings, where the committee performs a quasi-judicial role and investigates a criminal activity through examination of witnesses and evidence. Hearings can include statements from witnesses, committee members, or interested parties. The transcripts are usually published by the GPO a couple of weeks after the hearing ends as Committee Prints. Many witnesses submit statements in advance of the hearing and these usually are available online thru the Committees' websites.
Another way to search for hearings is by using the House and Senate Calendars. If you know when the Committee hearing was held, you can search for it by date or by topic.
For Scalia Law students, don't forget that you can always search for hearings using databases like ProQuest Congressional and ProQuest Legislative Insight. Choose Advanced Search and then limit your content type to Hearings in the facet searching on the left side of the screen for the best results.
Committee reports are produced by House and Senate committees and address legislative and other policy issues, investigations, and internal committee matters. Committee reports usually are one of these types:
Executive reports are issued by Senate committees reporting on treaties and nominations.
Most legislation never makes it out of committee. However, for legislation that does make it to consideration by the entire chamber, a written Congressional report is required by the House. The Senate does not require one. These Congressional reports are incredibly useful when compiling a legislative history as the report usually describes the purpose of the legislation and explains certain provisions. The reports also may explain the committee's actions, any markups that were done to the language of the bill, and other information that help explain the purpose of the legislation.
House reports are identified as H.Rept. with the Congress and a chronological number after it (i.e., H.Rept. 84-2248). Senate reports are identified in a similar fashion with the abbreviations S.Rept.
GovInfo.gov has an archive of Congressional reports that begin with reports from the 16th Congress in 1819.
For Scalia Law students, don't forget that you can always search for committee reports using databases like ProQuest Congressional and ProQuest Legislative Insight. Choose Advanced Search and then limit your content type to Reports in the facet searching on the left side of the screen for the best results.
Committee prints and documents are another source of information for the legislative history researcher. These prints and documents can be used to duplicate research papers or annual reports from executive branch agencies of interest to the committee, papers prepared by the committee staff, reports on investigative and oversight hearings and activities, committee rules, and analytical information on legislation. Some committees use prints for reproducing compilations of laws that come under their legislative jurisdiction.
Committee prints are identified as House Print (H. Prt.) or Senate Print (S. Prt.) and given a number that corresponds to the order that it was printed in. Committee documents are identified as House Document (H. Doc.) or Senate Document (S. Doc.) and also given a number.
For Mason Law students, don't forget that you can always search for committee prints using databases like ProQuest Congressional and ProQuest Legislative Insight. Choose Advanced Search and then limit your content type to Reports in the facet searching on the left side of the screen for the best results. Note that Legislative Insight has a way to limit your search to just committee prints which might be more focused for your search.
Finding committee documents can be difficult. The report names can be interchangeable, the committee might not publish a report right away, or there might be so many different reports that the process is overwhelming. However, there are a few sources that can make this process less painful.
U.S. Serial Set - this is a collection of the different reports and Congressional documents released by committees during a Congressional session. The series began in 1817 or the 15th Congress. Serial Set is most helpful for historic research because the editors gathered the reports and documents that garnered the most attention that session or that were the most relevant to historic or unique legislation passed during a session. Serial Set is not an inclusive resource, its scope was limited to those documents that were the most interesting. To some extent, ProQuest Legislative Insight is trying to provide a similar service with its contextual reports.
For Mason law students, the best way to access Serial Set is by using HeinOnline. Start by choosing the U.S. Federal Legislative Materials from the Database Types drop down menu, then scroll down to U.S. Serial Set, click, and you'll be taken to a search screen. Try remaining broad with your search, if at all possible.
