RA's Guide to Legal Research

Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. It is presented by the Library of Congress (LOC) using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the LOC’s Congressional Research Service. Congress.gov is usually updated the morning after a session adjourns.

Congressional bills are legislative proposals from the House of Representatives and Senate within the United States Congress. All final published bill versions are available.

The Texas Legislative Archive System provides easy access to online resources linked to a particular bill number. Results include links to scanned bill files, bill analyses, bill histories, and other documents. The Legislative Archive System is a work in progress. Complete information is not available for all bills and all sessions.

Use Text Search to search using multiple criteria such as bill number, subject, or action.

Enacted bills and joint resolutions appear on this list after NARA assigns public law (PL) numbers. PL numbers link to slip law texts after they have been published by GPO. (Private laws are in a separate list.)

The United States Statutes at Large, typically referred to as the Statutes at Large, is the permanent collection of all laws and resolutions enacted during each session of Congress. Most recent version is from 2014.

This library contains the session laws of all 50 U.S. states as well as Canada, Australia, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and the D.C. Register. All states are current within 60 days of the printed publication, and all states are available back to inception!

The statutes available on this website are current through the most recent Congressional Session

United States Code Annotated has all 54 titles and includes the Constitution, court rules and appendixes. Annotated materials include notes of decisions, cross references, research references, and more.

LexisNexis updates legislation as it is received from the source. Please see individual sections for the most recent currentness information.

Vernon's Texas Statutes Annotated includes current versions of TX statutes, constitution and court rules.

Use Bill Lookup when you already know the bill number. Bill text, fiscal notes, and bill analyses are available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. Congress.gov is usually updated the morning after a session adjourns.

The primary purpose of the Legislative Reference Library is to satisfy the reference and research needs of the Legislature, its staff, and its committees. Whenever possible within this framework, the library will assist the public and other state agencies with legislative research.

This database has compiled legislative histories for laws from 1969. The histories includes listings of all documents associated with the law, arranged by type of document. Most compiled legislative histories link to the full text of the document.

Makes available more than 18,000 legislative histories covering laws from the 1900s to the present, including 9,000 brand new histories as well as 4,000 that include new research.