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Legislative history refers to the materials that a legislative body produces as a potential law is introduced, studied, and debated. Courts, attorneys, and self-represented litigants use these documents when they are trying to determine the legislature's intent or to understand the language in the statute. This is useful when a law is new or when courts have not interpreted a law through decisions and opinions.
Federal legislative history is used to determine what Congress meant when it wrote the law. Start with the Getting Started tab if you do not have the Public Law Number of the law you're looking into. The Digging In tab will discuss Congressional resources to help you complete your history of a particular law or bill.
On rare occasions you may want to see what the intent of the President was when he or she was signing a bill into law or when making an Executive Order. Check out the Presidential Proclamations and Documents tab for resources to help you with determining a President's intentions.
You need to remember that these documents can help to make your case, but a court does not need to follow the information in them.
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