Know your history—your legislative history (January 2011)
By Leanne Battle
LexisNexis provides an incredible collection of resources needed to compile legislative histories. Whether you need to find the legislative intent of a specific subsection of the U.S. Tax Code; determine a water rights issue based on a 19th century maritime statute; or use historical reports to investigate a similar current political issue, you’ll find a vast array of resources at lexis.com®.
In addition, LexisNexis recently added the U.S. Serial Set and Congressional Hearings, historical and current to the already robust collection that includes the CIS Index, CIS and other legislative histories, and the Statutes at Large.
Of course, the key to using such a vast collection is in knowing how to use it effectively. Let’s review what you can find in these newly available sources.
Congressional hearings: what they can reveal
Congressional hearings may be held for a variety of reasons. They may serve to inform the committee of public and expert opinions of proposed legislative. They may provide oversight of the activities of a government agency. They may provide an opportunity for a Congressional committee purely to gain data and expert opinions on a topic of interest, perhaps in preparation for drafting future legislation.
The information communicated during Congressional hearings can be useful in a number of circumstances. For example, perhaps you need to:
- Confirm a specific quote for inclusion in a brief or court filing. The hearings are full-text searchable, thus making it possible to find specific phrases.
- Investigate an expert witness—maybe find details to discredit the testimony of opposing witnesses. Searching the hearings will allow you to retrieve and read the testimony of experts.
- Advise a client on a mine safety compliance issue. The hearings, when used with other sources, can also provide you with the information legislators used in formulating legislation, thus helping you to determine their intent.
- Teach a course on privacy and the government. Information from Congressional hearings can tell you what agencies have been subject to specific committee oversight for potential violations of privacy laws.
U.S. Serial Set: buried treasures
The U.S. Serial Set is a vast collection of materials published in a “serial” fashion by and for the use of Congress, covering almost all House and Senate reports and documents published since 1817. These include House and Senate Journals (until the 1950s), committee and conference reports related to and those not related to legislation, Presidential messages to Congress, executive branch publications, Statistical Abstract of the U.S.; Budget of the U.S., treaty items, maps, illustrations and materials from various non-governmental entities as well. It also includes the text of debates, bills, resolutions, hearings, committee prints, etc., where specifically ordered by Congress to be included.
The Serial Set documents cover a multitude of subjects. For example:
- Historical documents and reports on botany could prove useful in a patent issue.
- Environmental studies on air pollution provide an historical context for drafting new legislation.
- Maps outlining early development of waterfronts could prove to be critical in maritime zoning litigation.
Serial set and hearings research examples
Now that we know what the content is, we need to know how to use it to our best advantage. All of these resources offer documents that are full-text searchable, and you can use lexis.com search syntax you already know.
Sometimes though, information professionals need more refined search methods. So document segments present in these resources prove very helpful.
Here are some examples:
- I need to pull a specific 1964 Senate Report on the cotton industry. I have the report number.
SOURCE: U.S. Serial Set
SEARCH: DOC-NO(s rp 874) AND date is 1964
The DOC-NO segment allows you to search for the specific document number when you have it. This works for House and Senate documents, House and Senate reports, etc. (As with other citations at lexis.com, spacing is important, but no punctuation is necessary.)
- I need the documents related to a specific U.S. Public Law.
SOURCE: U.S. Serial Set
SEARCH: PUB-LAW-NO(88 pl 297)
You can run similar searches if you have the bill number or Statutes at Large reference. The segments are BILL-NO and STATUTES-AT-LARGE respectively.
- I need to see what the Potomac waterfront looked like in the late 1920s as well as any development plans available at that time.
SOURCE: U.S. Serial Set
SEARCH: map pre/3 potomac river AND waterfront / 5 develop! AND date bef 1930
While “map” is not a segment, map titles in the U.S Serial Set are always prefaced with the word map so you can use it to search titles that only apply to the maps. This is also true of illustrations and tables. Simply substitute the word “illustration” or “table” in the above example.
- I need to confirm, and provide a citation for, a statement by Edward R. Murrow from the McCarthy hearings relating to communism.
SOURCE: Congressional Hearings 1824-1979
SEARCH: WITNESS(edward /3 murrow) AND atleast10 (communis!) AND mccarthy
In each document there is a witness list that provides the specific page numbers on which the witness testimony appears. While there is no subject segment, you can use the ATLEAST precision search term to identify documents that are substantively about a topic of interest.
- I am collecting information for a course on privacy as it relates to government surveillance. I am most interested in information presented to the Committee on Homeland Security.
SOURCE: Congressional Hearings 2004-current
SEARCH: TITLE(privacy) AND SUMMARY(surveillance)
FOCUS™ terms: COMMITTEE(homeland security)
The TITLE segment can be especially useful if there was a series of hearings on the same issue. It allows you to retrieve
all of the hearings in the series with a single search. The SUMMARY segment is helpful in retrieving hearings that are substantively about a fairly broad topic. You can always use the FOCUS feature to extract documents on more narrow aspects of the issue or hearings from a specific committee.
These examples are just a tiny sampling of the information available in the U.S. Serial Set and Congressional hearings. There are countless gems to uncover on every topic from the impact of antitrust laws on baseball to reports on the Louisiana Territory. You’ll be amazed what you have at your fingertips!
