Remember that Resource, Part I: ProQuest Legislative Insight
March 7, 2023
ProQuest Legislative Insight: For Legislative Histories
I recently received a request for help with finding a compiled legislative history, and the student had tried “everything” (Westlaw, Lexis, and Google), but was unable to turn up anything particularly helpful. And while there are other helpful locations that may have helpful compilations (looking at you, HeinOnline), in this post I wanted to highlight a source that is amazing (and often forgotten) for students trying to locate a legislative history.
Legislative Insight provides “an unprecedented window into U.S. history” (like all ProQuest products) which means the documents generated in the process of enacting public laws since 1789 as full-text, searchable pdfs. That includes any CRS reports generated, any related bills, the public law itself, Congressional hearings, reports, prints, presidential signing statements, and more. That also means, though, that any Congressional documents not part of a legislative history are not included in Legislative Insight.
Legislative Insight has a few search features that can be very helpful to researchers including a quick search bar on the main page, Advanced Search (which allows for Boolean searches), and Search by Number which lets the searcher use citations to locate documents.
Legislative Process also lets the user track the development of a law and see exactly which documents are available in the legislative history and where they fall in the timeline.
The Congress in Context also provides “specially created historical profiles to discover more about the setting, personnel and events which may have influenced the legislation created during a particular Congressional period.” In other words, it can provide critical background for understanding Congressional action.
From the Home screen, federal legislative histories can be searched directly, or searchers can browse laws by their popular name or use the Citation Checker to verify that there are associated legislative histories.
An entry in the Legislative Insight will include the related bills and code sections (and where available based on your subscription) might include links to Regulatory Insight and Supreme Court Insight) in addition to providing relevant subjects and the related publications. These publications can include bills, congressional record documents, committee reports, hearings, and prints.
If you have any questions or need any help compiling a legislative history, please contact the law library at the Reference Desk, by email at lawref@unc.edu, by phone at 919-962-1194, or by chat at https://library.law.unc.edu (Click “Questions”).