Research Guides: Political Science: Legislative Documents

How a Bill Becomes a Law

The Legislative Process

If you are unfamiliar with the path that a bill takes before (or if) it becomes a law, there are a number of useful resources available that can guide you through the process. Having a basic understanding of the steps of law-making will make it that much easier to choose the right resource for locating particular documents.

Bills and Resolutions

The four principal forms of Congressional actions are bills, joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions, and simple resolutions. After a bill or resolution is introduced, it is assigned a legislative number, printed, and referred to a committee. A quick overview of their different designations is listed below. For more detailed explanations of the four principal forms of legslation go to the Bills & Resolutions section of House.gov.
Bills	Designated by originating chamber (House or Senate) and sequential number. S indicates Senate and HR indicate House of Representatives.
Joint Resolution	Designated by originating chamber (House or Senate), J (joint), and sequential number. (S. J. Res).
Concurrent Resolution	Designated by originating chamber (House or Senate), Con(concurrent), and a sequential number (H. Con. Res or S. Con. Res).
Simple Resolution	Designated by originating chamber (House or Senate), Res (resolution), and a sequential number (S. Res or H. Res.).

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
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ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest.
This resource is not part of the depository library program.

Congress.gov
The official website for U.S. federal legislative information. It provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information, presented by the Library of Congress (LOC).Congress.gov provides full-text access to daily Congressional Record issues from the 103rd Congress (1993) to the present and summaries of bills from the 93rd Congress (1973) to the present. New issues become available on Congress.gov shortly after they are published on GPO's FDsys usually before 10:00 am. It is usually updated the morning after a session adjourns. and provides the full text of bills.
Govinfo.gov
Govinfo.gov is Government Publishing Office's replacement for the Federal Digital System (FDsys) public website. It is particularly useful if you seek the recent full text of bills.Scroll down to link for "Most Recent Bills published in the last 24 hrs".

Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
Legislative Insight contains access to all of the various publications that become available as as a bill moves through the legislative process on its way to becoming a law. These include the full text of the Public Law itself, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports, and prints. Legislative Insight offers a research citation page that not only links to the full text of the associated primary source publications, but also allows the user to search within these documents.

Committee Hearings

After the referral of a bill to committee, members of the House set a date for public hearings to hear witness testimony. Hearings are held for most substantive proposals. Business dealt with by hearings may be broadly classified into four types: legislative, oversight, investigative, and consideration of presidential nominations. Transcripts of most hearings are published and growing collections of videotaped congressional hearings are also available. Please note that not all hearings are published. Listed below are databases and other online resources for hearings.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest.
This resource is not part of the depository library program.

Committees of the U.S. Congress
Committee websites provide access to hearings schedules, hearings video, and published hearings transcripts. Use Committees of the U.S. Congress to find committee websites. House Committee Hearings and Meetings Video provides access to live and archive hearings video from January 2012-present.
CSPAN Congressional Chronicle
Video resource for House and Senate debates and floor proceedings. Access the legislative schedule, a directory of committees and members, bills, votes and statistics about each session of Congress.
GovInfo.gov - Congressional Hearings
GovInfo provides selected House and Senate hearings for the 79th Congress (1945 - 1946) to current. Selected House and Senate appropriations hearings for various years from the 85th Congress (1957 - 1958) forward are also included. Documents are available as text and PDF.

Committee Reports

If the committee votes to report a bill, a committee report is produced. Committee reports are produced by House and Senate committees and accompany legislation. Each report provides a description of a bill, a description of the committee actions, findings of committee hearings and the outcome of committee deliberations. Committee reports usually are one of the following: (1) reports that accompany a legislative measure when it is reported for chamber action; (2) reports resulting from oversight or investigative activities; (3) reports of conference committees; and (4) committee activity reports, published at the conclusion of a Congress.

Congress.gov
Provides the full text and metadata for committee reports, including executive reports from 1995-present. Reports can also be browsed in number order and retrieved by citation.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest.
This resource is not part of the depository library program.

Committee Prints

A committee print might include committee rules or a report on a policy issue the committee wants to distribute widely, but in a form which is less formal than a committee report. A committee may also prepare a text which the Senate (by resolution) orders printed as a numbered Senate document.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest.
This resource is not part of the depository library program.

Debates

After a bill is reported out of Committee, it precedes to the floor of the House or Senate for consideration and debate. During the debates, members argue for and against the proposed legislation. All debates on the bill are read into the Congressional Record which is the official record of the proceedings, debates and activities of Congress. The Congressional Record also contains inserted materials, communications from the President and executive agencies, memorials, and petitions. The Congressional Record also contains the full text of the bill itself, the text of any amendments, and the record of votes taken. Listed below are resources for the Congressional Record.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest.
This resource is not part of the depository library program.

American Memory - Congressional Record
American Memory provides open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. Provides access to the Congressional Record through the Annals of Congress, 1789-1824, Register of Debates, 1824-1837, Congressional Globe, 1833-1873, Congressional Record, 1873-1875.
Congress.gov
Contains the Daily Edition of the Congressional Record, 1995-Present

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
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HeinOnline contains the full-text of law review journals and related legal documents, including the Code of Federal Regulations, English Reports (1220-1867), U.S. Presidential Library, U.S. Statutes at Large, and U.S. Supreme Court Library, and World Trials Library, and more.

Govinfo.gov
Govinfo.gov is the Government Publishing Office's (GPO) beta website that will replace the Federal Digital System (FDsys) public website. It provides the Daily Edition of the Congressional Record, 1994 to Present and The Daily Digest for the most recent Congressional Record.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the non-partisan research arm of the United States Congress. CRS experts prepare reports to assist Congressmen throughout the legislative process with background information on various public policy issues and debates. Research is conducted in American law, domestic social policy, foreign affairs, defense and trade, government and finance, resources, and science and industry. A typical CRS report provides a summary and overview of an issue, as well as detailed background information and recent developments. Reports contain citations of sources along with figures and tables.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Congressional allows you to explore Congress in action with the most comprehensive online resource available for congressional publications and legislative research. You can perform in-depth research in public policy, historical, and legal areas of interest.
This resource is not part of the depository library program.

EveryCRS Report
EveryCRS is a comprehensive free alternative to ProQuest Congressional. It has one of the largest collections of
publicly submitted CRS reports available on the web covering most
subject areas of interest.
Federation of American Scientist - CRS Reports
One of the largest free sources of CRS reports provided by The Federation of American Scientists, which provides science-based analysis of and solutions to protect against catastrophic threats to national and international security.