Legislative History

This page describes the steps you may take to find Nevada legislative history materials that are electronically available. For more information, please consult the law library's Nevada Legislative History Research Guide and the Legislative History Tutorial by Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau. (LCB)

Step 1. Identify a specific section of the NRS to research.

Step 2. Find the historical notes in the parentheses following the statute. The historical notes provide a year and page number that refers to the Statutes of Nevada (session laws) where the language of the statute originated.

• Example: (Added to NRS by 1979, 1087; A 1989, 1252; 1997, 2956)
• This historical note refers to the original enactment of the law in the 1979 Statutes of Nevada at page 1087. The law was then amended (A) in the 1989 Statutes of Nevada at page 1252, and it was amended again in the 1997 Statutes of Nevada at page 2956.
• The significance of other numbers and abbreviations in the history line is described at https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Library/LegHistory/Tutorial/NRSHistoryLine.html

Step 3. For each historical note in the parentheses, go to Statutes of Nevada and locate the volume that corresponds with the year and
page number for each session law.

Step 4. Find the language in each session law that is also found in the NRS section to determine if it is relevant to your research.

• Added language is noted by bolded, italicized text
• Omitted language is noted by [bracketed text].

Step 5. For bills that are relevant to your research, note the bill number, the chamber (Assembly or Senate), and the committee name
found at the beginning of each session law.

Step 6. The LCB has compiled legislative histories of many bills. Search the LCB's legislative history database to see if they have already compiled legisltiave histories for the bill. (Few pre-1985 legislative histories are available online). 

Step 7. If the LCB 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.

Step 8. 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