Compiled legislative histories are legislative histories that have already been researched by others. If a compiled legislative history exists for the federal statute you are researching, it will make your work much easier. Usually, compiled legislative histories will only exist for federal statutes that are more well-known. For example, major laws such as the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act all have compiled legislative histories that you can use in your research.
Compiled legislative histories can be found on Lexis Advance, Westlaw Edge, and ProQuest Legislative Insight. In addition, HeinOnline's U.S. Federal Legislative History Library contains many compiled legislative histories. There are also compiled legislative histories available in print. To access print legislative histories, search the Law Library catalog.
While we focus in this class on the use of legislative history in a litigation context, there are several other practical ways in which a statute's legislative history may be useful for you as an attorney. The following article by Mary Whisner describes some of these ways.
Article citation:
Mary Whisner, Other Uses of Legislative History, 105 Law. Libr. J. 243 (2013).
Lexis and Westlaw both provide options for researching federal legislative history research.
As an attorney, you may find that there are times that you need to research the legislative history of a state statute. The following research guide from the Jerome Hall Law Library at Indiana University - Bloomington contains helpful information about locating the legislative histories of statutes on the state level.
