What is legislative history?
Legislative history is the documented evidence pertaining to acts of the legislature. These acts can take the form of bills - both those that passed and became law, and those that did not. Legislative acts might take the form of resolutions, petitions to Congress, or other official investigations. Impeachments and censures are also the work of the legislature. These activities leave behind written evidence of how the legislature and individual legislators dealt with them. Creating a legislative history for a particular bill or bill topic requires identifying and examining the existing evidence, which can vary depending on the subject, year of debate, and availability of online sources.
"Legislative building, Olympia / Silvertone Photo Co." Susan Parish Photograph Collection, 1889-1990. Courtesy of the Washington State Digital Archives.
Doing Legislative History Research
Take it from the librarians who assist customers with questions relating to the Legislature on a weekly basis: this subject is complicated. Here are some general considerations to take into account:
1. Washington's government operated for almost 150 years before regular use of the internet began. The majority of materials relating to legislative activities before the year 2000 or so are undigitized and exist in paper only - although progress in digitization is being made all the time. For current legislative sessions, much of the critical information related to the passage of bills can be found on the Legislature's website. But even today there are some materials that can still only be found at the State Archives. Speaking of the State Archives:
2. The State Archives only has reliably consistent legislative bill files back to the 1970s. There are other collections that can shed light on legislative history sporadically back to the late 1940s, including the governors' papers and those of the Legislative Council. In general though, those are very incomplete. Trying to piece together the legislative intent behind a bill passed in the 1920s is almost always going to be much more difficult than a bill passed in the 1980s.
3. The Legislature passes laws; it is up to the Courts to interpret and enforce those laws. A legislative history may help you determine the legislature's general intention when it passed of a bill, and can even shed light on particular sections of a bill. It is frequently less helpful in determining why an exact phrase was used.
4. Legislators are people, and people can have long legislative careers or short ones. It is not uncommon to find very little documentation of early legislators who only served one term, especially during the poorly documented eras of legislative history.
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Contents
Researching the legislative history of a law or bill? Start here:
Doing biographical research on a legislator? Try this page:
Want to know about the history of Washington's legislature?
Hoping to find ideas for further reading about the legislature?