For quite a few years, LEGISLATIVE INTENT SERVICE has been able to efficiently gather and compile surviving documents on federal public laws from Congressional Depository libraries in Northern California, which include House and Senate bills ranging from the late 1700’s to this moment being discussed in Washington. We have also learned during these years, that the legislative history of federal laws is not an exact science – it takes creative effort, research collaboration, and years of experience to lead us to a successful compilation and collection of all available relevant materials.
The challenges in federal research draw from a long history of inconsistent and disorderly legislation, acts, and case laws.
Our federal statutes were originally compiled and organized at the request of President Millard Fillmore in 1851, who appointed “a commission to revise the public statutes of the United States, arranging them in order, supplying deficiencies, correcting incongruities, simplifying their language, and reporting them to Congress for its action.” (December 2, 1851) As President Fillmore indicated in his Second Annual Message, “The public statutes of the United States have now been accumulating for more than sixty years, and, interspersed with private acts, are scattered through numerous volumes, and, from the cost of the whole, have become almost inaccessible to the great mass of the community. They also exhibit much of the incongruity and imperfection of hasty legislation. As it seems to be generally conceded that there is no ‘common law’ of the United States to supply the defects of their legislation, . . . .” (Id.)
However, organizing the federal acts and statutes did not occur quickly. For example, in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln said that “I respectfully recommend to the consideration of Congress the present condition of the statute laws, with the hope that Congress will be able to find an easy remedy for many of the inconveniences and evils which constantly embarrass those engaged in the practical administration of them. . . . I am informed by some whose opinions I respect that all the acts of Congress now in force and of a permanent and general nature might be revised and rewritten so as to be embraced in one volume (or at most two volumes) of ordinary and convenient size . . . .” (December 3, 1861, Washington, First Annual Message)
There were post-Civil War attempts to codify our federal laws and finally in 1926 the United States Codes were created, organized by Titles into fifty areas of federal law. In 1927, West Publishing Co. published the first unofficial, annotated edition of the U.S. Code, entitled United States Code Annotated.
For those who have ordered legislative history of public laws from us, you know that successful enactments are usually accompanied by years of failed bills that, like the enacting bill, generated reports, hearings, committee prints, debates, and secondary sources providing background articles and summaries, all of which becomes important to your search for answers to your issues regarding the federal statute.
