TimeSaver: Federal Legislation  

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Need to obtain an item not in the University collections or online?  Use the Law Library's Interlibrary Loan service!  

The Law Library offers a variety of resources for researching current federal legislation. The materials enable you to research a bill from its introduction in Congress until its final disposition. Materials may include the full text or summary of the bill, amendments to the bill, the bill’s status in a committee, a committee hearing or report, legislative floor debate, a Presidential statement accompanying its enactment into law or veto, and the text of the bill as enacted into law.

The main resources are ProQuest Congressional database, LexisNexis and Westlaw legislative databases, and free government-sponsored websites. The Law Library's database ProQuest Congressional allows searching of the CIS/Index in addition to the full text of bills, committee reports and hearings, public laws, and the Congressional Record. In addition to their legislative databases, LexisNexis and Westlaw have numerous newspaper and magazine databases for locating articles pertaining to pending legislation. Two excellent government-sponsored websites for federal legislative information are the Library of Congress THOMAS and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) Federal Digital System.

For more information on how to access subscription digital resources from off campus, go to the Off Campus Access to Digital Resources page.