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INTS 3218: Intelligence Analysis and the U.S. Policymaking Process: Legislative Research

Bills and Tracking Congress

Tracking congressional activity is a complex task, but the easiest way to do this is with Congress.gov. This freely-available tool allows you to browse or search for bills at any stage of the legislative process. Search defaults to the current Congress, but the database goes back to previous sessions of Congress.

 

Public Laws

Public laws are also known as "slip laws" because of their initial publication in individual slip format.

Statutes

Public laws are bound together into the United States Statutes at Large, a sequential publication of laws in the order they were signed into law.

Compilations

The statutes are the law "as passed", but the compilations are the codification of the law into the United States Code, the law "as amended."

U.S. Code - Most User-Friendly Version

By far (in my opinion) the easiest way to navigate the U.S. Code is to use the version published by the House Office of the Law Revision Counsel (https://uscode.house.gov/). Some of its helpful features include:

Legislative History Research