Government Information--Legislative Process/Research

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Legislative Process & Legislative Research

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Introductions to the Legislative Process and Research in the Blume Library:

Guide to Congress. REF JK 1021 .C565 1991. Especially, the chapter entitled "The Legislative Process."
Encyclopedia of the U.S. Congress. REF JK 1067 .E63 1995. Especially, the article entitled "Lawmaking" in volume 3.
Congress A to Z. REF JK 1067 .C67 1993. Especially, the section entitled "Legislative Process"
Guide to American Law. REF KF 156 .G77 1983 (note the publication date, making this encyclopedia most useful for historical research)

There are some general guides to legislative research in the Blume and Law Libraries, as well as a great many specialized guides for particular areas of the law (most of these are in the Law Library). The holdings of both libraries are searchable in the Online Catalog. Choose "Subject Keyword" and search on "legislation" and "research."

Legislative Histories in Congressional Universe. This database is available for on-campus use AT THE LAW LIBRARY ONLY. The Blume Library has the printed CIS Index from which Congressional Universe grew, from 1970 to 1992. All the Legislative Histories for these years are available in these printed volumes, for use in the Library.

Legislative Process

Grace York, documents librarian at the University of Michigan, has developed a comprehensive guide to resources that covers the big-picture of law-making, from descriptions and analysis of important issues, through the actual legislative process, and on to the monitoring of results. She calls it a Public Policy Matrix, and it has been adapted here for use by the St. Mary's community.

Here are some other guides and sources of legislative information:

Enactment of a Law (from Thomas)
How Our Laws Are Made (from Thomas)
The Legal Process (from North Harris County Community College)
Legislative Process (from Columbia University)
Legislative Process (from Univ. of Indiana's Center on Congress)
Legislative Source Book (from the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.)
Tying It All Together: Learn about the legislative process (from the House of Representatives)
Update to A Guide to the U.S. Federal Legal System: Web-Based Publicly Accessible Sources (from the Law Library Resources Exchange)
Legislative Process Resources (from Bowling Green State Univ.)

Legislative Research
(Remember that references to onsite resources apply to the libraries where these guides were created; we may not have the same material in our Library)

Fedlaw (from General Services Administration; includes laws and regulations)
Congressional Information Research Guide (from Rebecca Knight at the University of Delaware)
Statutory Law Research Guide (also from Ms. Knight)
Federal Legislative History Research: A Practitioner's Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent (from the Law Librarians' Society)
How to Compile a Legislatiave History (Columbia University)
Legislative Information (from Yale University)
Legislative Research (web-based bibliographic instruction program from the Univ. of Michigan)

A good source of background information on the issues behind the legislation is the Almanac of Policy Issues. And for background and information on the political forces influencing legislation, check out Polticial Information.com.

The CQ Press Political Reference Suite (available on-campus and off-campus to St. Mary's students/faculty only) has a lot of information about the legislative process and politics in general, in text and data form. There is a good deal of directory-type information as well.

The Senate provides this handy index to active legislation, showing at which stage in the process each measure currenly resides, what future action is predicted, and legislation's effects on programs and appropriations.

NOTE: For historical legal research, the Library of Congress' "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation" is invaluable, providing access to laws, debates, journals and more for the years 1774-1873.

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