University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

One of your first considerations is whether you need to examine only laws, only regulations, or both.  Although both laws (statute law) and regulations (administrative law) work hand in hand, the processes by which they are created, and therefore researched, are quite different. Laws, or statutes, are introduced by Congress and must gain approval of both branches of Congress as well as the president.  Most laws tend to be broad and sweeping in their language.  Regulations are specific written requirements for enforcing laws, often developed by the agency responsible for carrying out the provisions of that law.  Regulations are usually far more detailed and precise.  Your next step will be to determine whether your legislation or regulations are at the federal or state level, because the sources will be different.   If you are familiar with the legislative research process, the quick chart on pages 2 and  3 will allow you to quick identify the source you need to consult.  Another good source is the Legislative Source Book by the Law Librarians Society of Washington DC, Inc.

Finding the text when you have a specific law in mind:

What do you already know about the law?

• Do you have a full citation?

• Do you have the official name or a popular name for the law?

• Do you have an approximate idea of when the law was passed?

If not, check Shepard's Acts and Cases by Popular Names. This includes both state and federal laws and will give you the date of passage, public law number, and, citations to the U.S. Statutes at Large and the U.S. Code. It will also provide dates and public law numbers for legislation amending that act.

Do you need the current text with any changes included? 

Consult the U.S. Code, which is a subject arrangement of all of the laws currently in effect.

• divided into 50 major subject categories, called titles

•   numbered sections of a  public law may appear in different areas of the code, depending on the subject matter of that section 

• numbering of the subject categories, or titles, does  not correspond to the numbering used in the Code of Federal Regulations 

• sections within the U.S. Code do not have the same numbers as they have in the U.S. Statutes at Large

Do you need  the text of the law as it was originally passed?

By looking at the text of the original public law in the U.S. Statutes at Large, you can determine the bill number, as well as a short legislative history.  This will also give you the corresponding section number where the text will be found in the U.S. Code.  

Do you need background information and/or a history of the action on that law?

Find the legislative history, which can usually be accessed by public law number.  The legislative history will give you the main provisions of the act, the bill number, and a list of committee reports, hearings and other important documents. Other categories of congressional publications can be useful in helping you to determine the intent of the legislation, its implementation, key  proponents and opponents, etc. 

• Congressional hearings will include testimony of people who support or oppose the legislation. Since hearings are generally very lengthy and have no index, quickly looking at the abstract of the hearing in Lexis Nexis Congressional you can quickly  learn who testified, what organizations were represented and what positions were presented, as well as actual page references for the testimony.  The abstract will also indicate any supplemental materials reprinted in that hearing.  Often statistics, journal articles, and previously unpublished research are reprinted here for the convenience of the committee.  In order to read the actual testimony you will have to retrieve the documents from the shelves. They will be shelved in the federal documents collection under the "Y4." SuDocs call number listed in the abstract.
  

• Committee reports  provide a summary of the bill, legislative intent, fiscal impact, and the Committee recommendation. If the Committee is divided on the bill there will generally be a "minority report" included. Reports often give an overview of the pros and cons brought out at the hearings. You can locate committee reports in our federal documents collection on 5^th floor using the "Y1." SuDocs call number listed in the abstract given in LexisNexis Congressional .
  
• Information about who introduced the bill, what action was taken, when it was passed, etc. is available in several sources: for bills of the 100th Congress or later use Congressional Index; for earlier Congresses use Digest of Public General Bills and Resolutions. Information on votes cast will be available in the "Voting" section of the Congressional Index, the Congressional Record, or C.Q. Weekly Reports, or on the Thomas web site. If the voting record indicates "voice vote" then there will be no record of how individuals voted.

Researching a Bill

• Keep in mind that Congress starts renumbering bills with each Congress, so you need to know the Congress number in addition to the bill number.
• Most bills are never acted on once they are introduced.
• If a bill is not passed by the end of that Congress it is automatically killed.
• If there is a voice vote, there is no record of how individuals voted on it.
• For voting records try Congressional Index, the Congressional Record, or the CQ Almanac.
• If the bill was not referred to a committee for further consideration, there are unlikely to be hearings on it.  Try searching Congressional Universe by bill number and/or subject.

NOTE: If an electronic source in the following charts is not designated "free anywhere", it is one of our licensed databases. In order to access it when off campus, you will be prompted to log-in with your campus network user name and password.

Federal Regulations

Regulations enforcing your act will be found in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which is a subject arrangement of all regulations currently in effect. Each volume is revised annually. Updates and proposed regulations appear first in the Federal Register (FR). The  print version of the CFR has a subject index and also cross reference tables from the U.S. Code, the U.S. Statutes at Large, and public law numbers to sections in the CFR.  To determine if a particular CFR section has been updated, consult LSA, List of CFR Sections Affected, which will cite page numbers in the Federal Register where the changes will appear. 

Wisconsin Legislation & Regulations

Researching an Act

If you are researching a Wisconsin act (a bill already signed into law), you should begin by looking at the act itself, which is published in: Laws of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Statutes, and Wisconsin Statutes Annotated.

• To find the act in Laws of Wisconsin you will need the Act number or the date it was passed because the acts are arranged in order by the Act number. There is a subject index in the back of the volume which can help you identify the Act number. You can also use the Bulletin of Proceedings to determine the Act number if you know the year it was passed.  
  
• If you only know the name or subject of the act you should begin with Wisconsin Statutes or Wisconsin Statutes Annotated. The latter will provide more background on the Act as well as references to decisions affecting the implementation of the act. You should begin in the subject index volume which will give you a statute number, e.g. 944.3. This will lead you to the text of the law. At the end of the text there will be a Legislative History, which will tell you when the original bill became law and if and when there were revisions to the law.
  
• Although the State of Wisconsin does not publish hearings, the Legislative Reference Bureau (http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lrb/index.htm) does publish documents which analyze the need for and assess the effectiveness of legislation.  These reports can be searched in the library's computer catalog, and are shelved in the Wisconsin documents collection on 5^th floor.

Researching a Bill

If you are researching a current bill you should begin with Bulletin of Proceedings of the Wisconsin Legislature. If you do not know the bill number, you will have to look in the subject index first to get the bill number. If you already know the bill number, you may look up information directly by the bill number.  Summaries in the Bulletin will tell you who introduced the bill, any action what has happened to the bill, and what the current status is. The first page of the bill will have a section entitled: Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau.

Regulations

Regulations developed to enforce legislation appear in the Wisconsin Administrative Code. Arrangement is by agency. There is a general subject index at the end of the print version. The state does not publish an equivalent of the Federal Register with extensive information about proposed regulations and comments received.  The Administrative Register is the official announcement of new regulations.