FEDERAL LEGISLATIVE HISTORY RESEARCH:

A Practitioner's Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent
LLSDC

DETAILED OUTLINE with links to WRITTEN NARRATIVE
A. Introduction: What Federal Legislative Histories Are and How They Are Used
1. Compilation of related legislative docs that precede the enactment of a U.S. public law
2. Used by federal agencies, attorneys and courts to interpret a law
a. At the least tells you general purpose of a law or particular title in a law
b. Usually harder to decipher legislative intent in smaller provisions in a law
3. Controversy about relying on documents that are not enactments
a. Many law journal articles written debating the merits of leg. histories
b. Recent critics, textualists like Justice Scalia, have dampened use in courts
c. See bibliography of selected law journal articles