This LibGuide is meant to help law students who need to know about how to conduct legislative history research.
You may be wondering why you should learn about legislative history research:
Legislative History is the record of a bill's enactment into law. During this often lengthy process, many documents are created that can assist researchers in determining the legislature’s intent, which may then aid in analyzing unclear or ambiguous terms, or help in resolving potential disputes among parties. These documents include many types of materials, such as original and amended texts of a bill, committee reports and prints, hearings, debates, records of votes, and other accompanying documents. This LibGuide explains the legislative process and what documents are produced at each stage, resources which allow you to access these documents, and where those resources are located.
The purpose of legislative history research is to help determine the legislature's intent in passing legislation where the interpretation of the statute is unclear.
There is disagreement as to the value of legislative history within courts, including the highest court in the land.
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Why would the Framers have preferred (1) a system of interpretation that relies heavily on linguistic canons to (2) a system that seeks more directly to find the intent of the legislators who enacted the statute? Stephen Breyer, Active Liberty 117 |
My view that the objective indication of the words, rather than the intent of the legislature, is what constitutes the law leads me, of course, to the conclusion that legislative history should not be used as an authoritative indication of the statute’s meaning. Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation 29-30 |
