The Law Library is pleased to announce that we have recently subscribed to a wonderful new database for federal legislative history research called ProQuest Legislative Insight. It is available to UW Madison students, faculty and staff, or to anyone who visits a campus library.
Legislative Insight contains PDFs of numerous publications generated in the course of congressional lawmaking, including the public law, all bill versions, floor debate from the Congressional Record, committee reports, conference committee reports, hearings, and prints. Also included are Presidential signing statements, CRS reports, and other miscellaneous congressional publications.
Legislative Insight covers enacted laws from 1929 to the present. However, note that the database is still in development and there are some gaps. For material not covered by Legislative Insight (un-enacted legislation, pre 1929 laws, or post 1929 laws falling in the gap), see our guide to Federal Legislative History. (If it’s Wisconsin that you’re interested in, see our guide to Wisconsin Legislative History.)
Legislative Insight offers powerful search features. You can search by popular name, citation or keyword. Once you select the appropriate law, you can also keyword search the full text of all the documents to narrow down a large legislative history to just the relevant text.
Search results can be displayed by publication type or forward or reverse chronological. Or, with the Legislative Process outline, you can choose just those documents created during a given phase of the legislative process. See the image below.
