Finding Legislative History: Background Research

The official website of the U.S. Congress.

This feature of Congress.gov enables users to browse legislation by subject.

This feature of the official website for U.S. federal legislative information provides insight into legislation that is being acted on by Congress. If you choose to track something that's "highly viewed" you're guaranteed to have active media coverage.

GovTrack's mission is to make legislation and related information more accessible. The site is independently operated and includes a tracking feature that users can utilize to track legislation.

The U.S. Senate Research Guides include a collection of "How to" instructions on researching federal legislative information. Additional sections cover committee contacts, historical publications, and a glossary.

The National Conference of State Legislatures provides state level information and legislative tracking on elections and other key political issues.

CRS provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Reports can be a valuable resource for reviewing legislatively relevant issues. Access to reports generally covers from 2018 to date.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports in the HeinOnline database is an extensive collection that provides access to full text reports dating back to 1916.

The Legal Information Institute provides links to federal, state and international legal resources, including a dictionary of terms.

Govinfo provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government. Govinfo provides access to federal document collections related to bills, laws and regulations. Content provides legislative bill tracking information such as the Congressional Record, Congressional Hearings, the United States Code (USC), U.S. Court Opinions, public laws. It also includes the Congressional Directory of members and committee memberships, federal regulations, and budget appropriation bills. The site includes tutorials and help pages.

Ballotpedia is a nonpartisan digital encyclopedia of American politics and elections. This portal allows users to search for: sample ballots by home address; local-state-congressional-national election information; key legislative ballot issues; policy summaries; polling indexes; school boards; municipal boards and more.

The ElectionGuide, provided by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), is a source of election information that can be searched by country, including the United States.