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PS 250: Introduction to Public Policy

 

Legislative Information

LexisNexis Congressional   FT  UIUC
Identify a law, explore its history, and access related full-text congressional documents. 

First: Questions about How a Bill Becomes a Law? Consult this when questions arise.

1.  From the Laws menu, identify and access the text of a statute using one of five methods:

• By subject:  Go to Legislative Histories and use the Subject List.

This is the only search that will identify all laws on a particular topic and eliminate false hits.

• By popular name:  Go to Statutes at Large and use the Popular Names index.
• By title keyword:  Go to Legislative Histories and use the second search option.
• By full text:  Go to Public Laws. 

If you choose this route, begin by using the most specific language you can, and use the boolean operator NOT to exclude anything that could result in a false hit. 

• By public law number (e.g., P.L. 107-252):  Go to Public Laws by Number.

2.  Find the legislative history of your law at Legislative Histories for Statutes:

• Enter the public law number in the spaces provided and print this document--you will consult it often.

3.  Find the congressional documents identified in the statute's history.

• In LexisNexis legislative histories, documents appear by type and in reverse chronological order. Try to get the full text by clicking on the red accession codes. Or, if you already have the legislative history in hand, access the documents it identifies through the Publications page on the LexisNexis Congressional home page. Bills and committee reports are also easy to find in Thomas.
• Complete committee hearings, which have SUDOC numbers beginning with "Y4," are not always available via LexisNexis. When they are available, they lack the appendices, which are often the most interesting part. 
• Complete hearings can be found on the GPO Access Congressional Hearings page and on some House and Senate committee web sites. These documents are long, so you'll probably need to consult several, and you may want to use the print versions in the Main Library's Main Stacks (i.e., the Circulation Desk, 2nd floor). If you see "SUDOC: Y4.SCI2:107-20" in LexisNexis, the call number in the Library is "DOC.Y4.SCI2:107-20."

4.  Retrieve the bill tracking reports for the bills listed in your legislative history.

• Link to the full-text bills. A link with the text Retrieve Bill Tracking Report will always appear near the top of each full-text bill in LexisNexis. Print this.

U.S. House of Representatives
Provide press releases, markup transcripts, and other sources,. Provides links to web pages of committees (including press releases), the House leadership, and representatives' offices.

• Committee Offices
  Provide press releases, markup transcripts, hearings, and other sources.
• Office of the Speaker
  
  
• Office of the Majority Leader
  
  
• Democratic Leadership
  
  
• Majority Whip
  
  
• House Republican Conference
  
  
• Democratic Whip
  
  
• Democratic Caucus
  
  
• House Policy Committee
  

U.S. Senate
Includes links to the web sites of committees and individual senators.

The President's remarks on bills appear in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents .

POLICY ANALYSIS

Government Sources:

Congressional Budget Office
Provides the Congress with analyses needed for economic and budget decisions and with the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.

Congressional Research Services Index on CD-ROM (Computer Workstation #1, Government Documents Library)
Indexes reports in the Major Studies & Issue Briefs of the Congressional Research Service microfiche set in the Government Documents Library. Few of these documents are available on the Internet.

Congressional Research Service Reports
Some links provide access to a number of full-text CRS documents.

General Accounting Office
The GAO performs audits and evaluations of government programs and activities.  While some GAO reviews are required by law, the majority are undertaken through the request of a congressional committee.

Commercial Sources:

CQ Electronic Library  FT    UIUC 
Includes the CQ Weekly, CQ Researcher, and other public affairs sources.

Congressional Quarterly Almanac  
(328.7305COQ, Government Documents Library).  
No source provides a better overview of Congressional activity during a given year.

 

Administrative Process

LexisNexis Congressional   FT  UIUC

Federal Register
Contains proposed rules and final rules, which will be incorporated in the Code of Federal Regulations.

• Each issue of the Federal Register is arranged roughly by executive body, as the table of contents for each issue on GPO Access demonstrates.
• A citation consists of the volume number, "FR," page number, and year, as in 46 FR 3566 (1981).
• To display more information on each of your hits, click on the Expanded List or KWIC (keyword in context) tab.

Code of Federal Regulations
Contains regulations that have been printed as final rules in the Federal Register.

• Published annually, and rules printed in the Federal Register do not appear immediately in either the online or print versions of the CFR.
• Searching the CFR is difficult because of the quantity of information it contains. The volume of the regulations currently in force is triple that of the laws in effect.
• CFR references consist of a title number, "CFR," section number, and year, as in 40 CFR 211.10 (1978).
• It is not always easy to identify the statute that resulted in a regulation. The Code of Federal Regulations by statutory authority search option may help make this connection, but you must have a reference to the United States Code.

Executive Agency Sites

Federal Government Resources: Executive Branch

Federal E-Rulemaking Sites

Office of Management and Budget Regulatory Matters

Laws on the Rulemaking Process

Unified Agenda

 

Supreme Court Policy Making

Limitation:

• Westlaw and other services providing full-text online documents are available only to Law School students at the UIUC.

LexisNexis: Basic Legal Research  FT  UIUC

• Click on Legal Research. 
• First get the citation.
• Then Shepardize it by going to Sherpard's for U.S. Supreme Court.
• You may be able to get full-text opinions of federal courts by linking to the appropriate the sites at Federal Courts web site.

 

Private Parties in the Policy Process

Open Secrets

• Provides campaign finance data.
• Contains the Lobbyists Database.

Politics1

• Identifies and categorizes interest groups according to ideology (see Ideologies).
• Links groups to particular issues.

Think Tanks

• The Comprehensive Listings at the top are extensive directories.
  

 

News Sources

Multiple Titles:

Politics1
Provides a wide array of policy-related news sources.

Individual Titles:

The Hill  FT  UIUC
Covers Congress and the influence of congressional leaders, the administration, and lobbyists. The Hill is delivered every Wednesday to each member of Congress and thousands of congressional aides. To access it, select Inside Washington on the LexisNexis Congressional main menu.  

National Journal  FT  UIUC
Focuses on current public policy issues. You can also access the Almanac of American Politics through this site.

New York Times (only through 2001)  FT  UIUC

Roll Call
This semi-weekly newspaper covers Congress.

Project Vote-Smart|
"Thousands of candidates and officials, five basic categories: backgrounds, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances and performance evaluations."

Washington Post  FT  UIUC
The A Section contains national political coverage, including investigative reporting and public policy analysis. To access, select Inside Washington on the LexisNexis Congressional main menu.

 

For comments on this page contact: Government Documents Library

Last modified by: Leo Dion on 2/2/09