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California Legislative History Research: Step 3: Documents

Attempt to find what legislators were thinking when drafting a law by looking at the documents created during the legislative process.

Get an overview: Bill History

A Bill History, located in the Final History (formerly called Final Calendar), lists all actions taken on a bill:

  • print: bound with bills (separately for Senate and Assembly), in the Stacks at KFC5
  • online: Clerk of the Assembly's Archives: Histories & Indexes (1881-2015)

Bill Histories are listed chronologically by bill number. Make note of the bill authors and committees the bill was referred to, and dates of action. This information can help you find documents as discussed in the rest of this guide.

Look for documents

Once you have the overview provided by the Bill History, you need to track down legislative documents generated in the porcess. The following are the types of legislative documents you may work with to find clues to legislative intent—see these tabs for details of where to find, and what to look for in ...

General online source: Hathi Trust collection, 1850-2009

Thousands of California legislative publications are available to read or download (including full-volume downloads if logged in as a UCB affiliate) via HathiTrust. You can browse available publications (by category tabs, such as "Assembly Final History"), sorted by year. Uses/date ranges include: 

  • useful for Step 3: Get an overview: Bill History
    • Final Calendars (1899-2011)
    • Senate Final History (1973-2006)
    • Assembly Final History (1964-2009)
  • useful for Step 3: The Bill
    • Senate Bills (1903-1987)
    • Assembly Bills (1911-1988)
    • Statutes (1849-2008) (final, chaptered version, for enacted bills only)
  • useful for Step 3: Hearings & Reports (ctrl-F app to find Appendix volumes that may contain committee reports)
    • Journal of the Assembly (1849-2009)
    • Journal of the Senate (1849-2003)
    • Journals of the Legislature (1851-1999)
  • useful for Step 3: Legislative Intent Letters
    • Journals of the Assembly (1849-2009)
    • Legislative Indexes (1949-2011)

These collections are the result of a collaboration among the California Office of Legislative Counsel and librarians at the University of California, Stanford University, and the California State Library.

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