Shift #45 - Federal Legislative History Webinar
Thursday, July 11, 2024 | 12-1 pm CST/1-2 pm EST (1 hr)
This was a very thorough webinar on federal legislative history. If it was possible, people should attend these webinars (and thankfully, they are open and free to the public). In the process, I learned that there is a collection of documents (transcripts, reports, drafts) that are gathered and produced by a legislative body – usually regarding a bill. These documents are important because they provide insight on the "intent" of Congress in regards to existing federal laws. The documents can help answer whether new legislation is needed and/or if an existing statute should be changed. It also helps when an existing statute's plain language is arguably ambiguous and allows researchers to better understand the "cultural history" of a statute or a full public law at the time. A legislative history is made up of bills and resolutions (various versions of the bill or res as it moves through Congress), Committee hearings (transcripts, particularly those that reflect statements of or some discussion among committee members), Committee reports (often the best source of legislative history; this is the committee stating the intent of the bill and the most complete), floor debate (goes on the congressional record) and there is often a prepared or spoken explanation that follows an amendment to a bill that is submitted on the floor of the House or Senate, and the Congressional documents and prints. The latter can include treaty documents, reports of executive departments and agencies and prints can include historical research, compilations of bills, directories, investigative reports, and the like.
I also learned that most bills never make it out of committee; most of the bills die but those don't get reported to the floor. The President of the United States has ten days to sign or veto a bill. In the webinar, we also got examples of a congressional bill's citation, so you can figure out the bill number, the session of Congress, the title of the bill and the date (and stage) of the bill. A bill goes through committee consideration, which is essentially a hearing. A committee will hold the hearing (which includes investigation and evaluating activities) and there will be a publication of that hearing. The publication is published by the committee, not the Chamber, so publication practices vary. Published hearings typically include a table of contents with witness information, transcripts of testimonies, prepared statements, and other supplemental information. There are different kinds of hearings: oversight (how government money is spent or how government agencies are being run, done usually during the appropriations process), investigative (members evaluate wrongdoing being done by someone), confirmation (approving nominations put forth by the President), and legislative (for a specific bill or grouping of bills on a topic, or Congress making legislation on it so the hearing can be a fact-finding process before the bill is introduced). After hearings are done, then the committee report needs to be approved by the committee. Once a bill gets reported out of committee, it goes to floor debate (voting on bills, resolutions, and amendments), then the introduction and passage of bills and resolutions. Once that is done, then the Congressional Record is published.
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