Anyone who has ever had a legislative history research project knows that it can be hard work parsing through all of those documents trying to find legislative intent. It makes sense to find those legislative documents as quickly as possible, so that you can get to the hard work of finding legislative intent.
The best way to find all of the legislative history documents for a statute is to look for a compiled legislative history. Compiled legislative histories put all of the relevant documents together, in full-text, in one place.
But, Clare, that sounds expensive! It can be. Some of the best sources for compiled legislative history are on Westlaw and HeinOnline.
However, there is a great site that lists free compiled legislative histories available online. It’s from the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C. and you can find it here. This links you to legislative histories compiled by the Department of Justice, law professors, and others.
You may find some that are not true compiled legislative histories, in that they do not include the full-text of the documents, but they will at least give you a citation to find the document elsewhere.
So if you need a shortcut to legislative history and you need it cheap, look no further than the LLSDC’s Legislative Histories of Selected U.S. Laws on the Internet: Free Sources.
