Federal Legislative History

Legislation begins with a proposed bill.  A bill contains the text of a proposed law and is introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate by its sponsor.  Most online sources for bills allow you to search using keywords.  However, if the topic of the bill has been proposed many times, it may be difficult to find the bill you want. 

In researching federal legislative history, it helps to know in which Congress and session the bill was introduced in. This will help you limit your search results. Each Congress occurs over two years and has two sessions, labeled 1 and 2 respectively, with each session lasting a year.  For example, on January 2025, the 119th Congress, session 1 began and will adjourn or end in December 2025 or early January 2026.  The second session of the 119th Congress will begin in January 2026 and adjourn or end in December 2026 or early January 2027. 

An introduced bill (regardless of whether it advances or not) will have a numeric label that indicates the Congress, the session, and the chronological number assigned to the bill when it was brought to the House Clerk. On January 23, 2025, House bill number 165, The Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act, was proposed.  This means that the bill was the 165th piece of legislation put before the House Clerk.  A citation for the unenacted bill could look like this:  H.R. 165, 119th Cong. (1st Sess. 2025) or this: 119-1 H.R. 165 (2025).  Senate bills would be cited in a similar fashion and look like this: S. 165 119th Cong. (1st Sess. 2025) or: 119-1 S. 165 (2025).  A similar numbering system is used for resolutions, House and Senate joint resolutions, House and Senate concurrent resolutions, and Senate executive resolutions.

Joint resolutions are used to propose constitutional amendments and, most importantly for the researcher, continuing appropriations. Joint resolutions proceed through the same legislative process as bills and can be tracked or found in a similar manner.  

If you only know the year the legislation passed, you can usually determine which Congress and session it was enacted by looking at the Dates of Sessions of Congress chart maintained online by the U.S. Senate.  This will help you find the Congressional session where the legislation was passed.     

The best place to start searching for the full text of bills is thru Congress.gov which is maintained by the Library of Congress. Congress.gov has the full text of legislation beginning with the 101st Congress (1989-1990).  It also provides links to the Congressional Record, live streams for debates, information about House and Senate Floor Activities, calendars, committees, and individual members' websites. If you are looking for legislative tracking, Congress.gov has a number of alert services that provide up to the minute reports on bill status, sponsors of legislation, House and Senate floor activity, and much more.   

Another source for legislative text is the GovInfo website that is maintained by the Government Printing Office or GPO.  The GovInfo website allows you to search the full text of bills from the 103rd Congress (1993-1994) to present.  It also has a Browse Bills feature that lets you look at all the legislation from each Congress by number.      

If you are a Scalia Law student, you also have access to full text legislation through a number of different databases: 

• ProQuest Congressional - extensive topical focus on Congressional information that includes public policy research, news and social media links, committee reports, bills, CRS reports, Congressional Record statements, text from debates, and other similar government sources.
• ProQuest Legislative Insight - primarily focused on legislation and sources of information produced by Congress including committee reports, texts of laws, texts of hearings, and Congressional record materials.  This resource will easily allow you to compile a legislative history using all materials that are publicly available. Coverage begins with the 1st Congress. 
• HeinOnline.org - extensive collections of federal legislative materials; while there's no federal bills database per se, you can search the daily Congressional Record on the day the legislation was introduced to find the bill and any comments made by the sponsor or other members of Congress. To find the federal legislative materials, choose U.S. Federal Content from the Database Type menu and scroll through the databases.
• Lexis+ - contains collections of Federal legislative materials from the current Congress back to 1989 or the 101st Congress.  To access current bills click on the Content tab, then choose Statutes and Legislation, then choose Bill Text, and type in your keywords to find the most current bills.   
• Westlaw Precision - collections of Federal bills from the current Congress back to 1995 or the 104th Congress. To access current bills, click on the Federal materials tab, then choose Federal Proposed and Enacted Legislation, or type in your request in the search bar. Westlaw also has the CRS Summaries of Proposed Bills which is a summary of the bills written by the staff of the Congressional Research Service.

Tracking the status of a bill is one of the biggest parts of a legislative history. There are a number of ways to track the status of legislation; what's listed below are some of the more common resources used by researchers.

General Resources 

• Congress.gov - To look for a specific bill, you can either enter the citation or the keywords in the search bar at the top of the main web page. Use the facet searching on the left side of the screen to refine your results and make sure you've chosen the correct Congress to search in.  When you find your bill, you'll see a graphic tracker that gives you the latest update on its progress and a brief summary that will tell you the Latest Action taken. You can sign up for free alerts to be notified of any changes or updates as well.
• GovTrack.us- Another web resource to track bills is GovTrack.us which is run by an organization that uses openly available data to make information about Congress available for free on the internet.  You can search by bill, keywords, or committees.  Most legislation on the site has a detailed timeline graphic explaining the status of the bill and includes information about potential future actions. There are also options to easily set up alerts for specific bills or legislative activity or even by representative.
• Lexis+ - To access Bill Tracking, click on the Content tab, then choose Statutes and Legislation, then choose Bill Tracking.  Then enter your keywords in the search box.  
• Westlaw Precision - To access bill tracking in the current Congress, type Federal Bill Tracking in the search bar and choose Bill Tracking as it pops up as an option for a Content Page.  The reports in this database relay the entire history of the bill to date. Federal Bill Tracking-Historical, its companion database, is great for a brief report for historical legislation as well.  

Calendars

House and Senate Calendars have a wealth of information available in them including bill status.  For the current session, if you need to look up a bill status, start with the Calendars of the U.S. House of Representatives and History of Legislation.  Besides being a calendar of all the sessions and meetings, this resource also contains a legislative history of each House and Senate bill that has been reported from committee.  It is prepared and updated each day the House is in session.  To access the latest version, go to the Congress.gov Resources- Floor Calendars. Under the heading of House Clerk Calendars, you'll see the listing for the Calendar. Click on it to open a pdf of the latest Calendar.  To open other days' calendars, go to Govinfo.gov's- Congressional Calendars.  There, you can browse calendars by Congress, session, and date.  This site contains calendars back to the 104th Congress (1995).     

The U.S. Senate calendar, The Calendar of Business, contains legislative business that is eligible for floor action.  Although it does not contain a true legislative history, a researcher can find out the date when a bill has been reported or ordered to the floor for action.  To access the most current version, go to Congress.gov Resources- Floor Calendars and look for Calendar of Business under the Secretary of the Senate Calendars heading.  To open other days' calendars, go to Govinfo.gov's- Congressional Calendars.  There, you can browse calendars by Congress, session, and date.  This site contains calendars back to the 104th Congress (1995).

For historic research, Govinfo.gov keeps an archive of congressional calendars back to the 104th Congress.  The House keeps an online archive of calendars back to the 56th Congress (1899) and the Senate's website also keep archives of their executive calendars.

Congressional Record

The Congressional Record, freely available from Congress.gov, is the daily transcript of the proceedings on the House and Senate floor.  The key to understanding the Congressional Record is the Daily Digest which summarizes committee activities, makes note of any bills introduced and passed, amendment activity, appointments, nominations, and roll call votes from the previous day all in a brief format.  It provides page numbers to the Congressional Record where you can read the full remarks about any of those activities.  It also contains some useful finding aids for tracking the status of bill.  At the end of every day, the House publishes the Public Bills and Resolutions section which is a summary of bills and committee referrals made that day.      

For historical research, the Congressional Record Index Volumes which are published with the bound set of the Congressional Record contains a History of Bills and Resolutions for that session.  The Final Resume of Congressional Activity published by the Senate at the end of every session of Congress provides a legislative history in brief of every bill that was enacted into a public law.  The Senate maintains an online archive of these Resumes back to 1947.

For Mason law students*, the Congressional Record is widely available through:

• HeinOnline.org - Here you can search the daily Congressional Record on the day the legislation was introduced to find information about the bill and any comments made by the sponsor or other members of Congress. To find the Congressional Record, choose U.S. Federal Content from the Database Type menu and then choose U.S. Congressional Documents.  You can choose the Congressional Record Daily to find the most current releases of the Congressional Record, including the Daily Digest, or you can do a keyword search for your terms.
• Lexis+ - To access the Congressional Record, click on the Content tab, then choose Statutes and Legislation, then choose Congressional, at this point you can either type in your keywords to search the Congressional Record, or you can click on Congressional Record again and be taken to a browse feature where you can browse by Congress and date.
• ProQuest Congressional - Click on Advanced, then choose Congressional Record in the facet searching on the left side of the screen under Content Type, then enter your keywords in the search bar.

*The Congressional Record is available via many online databases.  These are the most user friendly choices.