- University Libraries Databases
- WMU Research Guides
- PSCI 4940: Immigration Law and Policy
- Research Legislative History
PSCI 4940: Immigration Law and Policy
How to Compile a Legislative History
- Compiling a Federal Legislative History: A Beginner’s GuideThis brief guide by the Law Library of Congress describes how to find a pre-compiled legislative history, if one exists, and how to compile one from scratch.
- How to Trace Federal LegislationIf you are you are compiling a legislative history, you will need to trace federal legislation, i.e., identifying the various congressional acts that resulted in a new or updated section of the U.S. Code. This guide shows show to do that.
- Locating a Compiled Federal Legislative HistoryThis guide lists examples of compilations of pre-compiled federal legislative histories, The guide is authored by the Law Library of Congress
Finding Components of Legislative History
- Westlaw This link opens in a new window
Westlaw's research service redesigned for students. Legal sources, including the Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Register, United States Code Annotated (USCA), Federal and State court cases, American Law Reports (ALR), American Jurisprudence 2d, Black's Law Dictionary, Legal Guides, and more. Also includes more than 700 law reviews and journals.
Citations sent using Westlaw's email option do not provide a permalink that can be used to link directly to a case. Users are encouraged to log into Westlaw and then search for the citation(s) received via email, and when sending cases, to select the radio button for "documents" instead of "list of items" when using the email option.Added January 3, 2014.
- How to research legislative history of a statute (2 min 46 sec)This short video shows how to use the Westlaw database to find the documents to compilie a legislative hsitory of a statute.
Highlighted topics:
00:39 - Finding legislative history on Westlaw
00:51 - To find the legislative history for this statute
02:41 - Check out the statute's legislative history - How to research statutes (PDF)Instructions on how to find a statute in Westlaw by searching for a citation, in a popular name table, in a topic index, or by searching for keywords.
Westlaw is an online database of legal resources.
Legal Research - The Basics
Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law (19th ed.) by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 1413328881Publication Date: 2021-08-31
Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law includes a section on how to use legislative history as a tool to to understand and interpret statutes and on how to find federal and state legislative histories (p.112-14).
Legislative Research by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9781634637992Publication Date: 2015-01-01A chapter of note in this book is: "Chapter 3: Legislative History Research: A Guide to Resources for Congressional Staff".
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