Law Journal Resources

A guide for law journal editors and staffers to cite checking.

Locating Legislative History Materials

Federal
State

Use ProQuest Legislative History and ProQuest Congressional to locate federal legislative history documents such as bills, committee hearings, committee/conference reports, and the Congressional Record. You may access the ProQuest databases via the MyBoydLaw Portal.

ProQuest Legislative History contains legislative history materials for enacted federal laws. If you are looking for legislative history materials related to a bill that was never enacted, please use ProQuest Congressional. Both databases provide the Search by Number feature in which you will be able to enter the citation to retrieve the document.

Click "Search by Number" and then enter the citation to access the document.

Click "Congressional Publications" and then "Search by Number" to retrieve the document by citation.

Nevada

Check the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau's compiled legislative history database to see if it contains legislative history for your bill.

If the database does not have legislative histories for your bill, go to https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Session/ and select the bill's session, Bill Information, and then the bill number. This will take you to the webpage for the bill containing many types of legislative history documents including the bill texts, committee meeting minutes/agendas, and the bill's history.
- Committee meeting minutes from 1993 or earlier are NOT available online.
- Some committee meeting minutes from 1993 or earlier are avalable in Drawers 21A and 21B in the microforms room in the law library student lounge. The first microfiche in each packet has an index of bills and dates bills were discussed. Locate the microfiche relevant to the bill using the dates in the index.
For information on researching legislative history materials that are not available online (i.e. older materials), please consult the LCB's Legislative History Tutorial: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Library/LegHistory/Tutorial/NotCompiled.cfm

Other States

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law provides an inventory of legislative history guides for all 50 states. The guides explain how to access various types of state legislative history document.