Legislative history is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as "the background and events, including committee reports, hearings and floor debates, leading up to an enactment of an act." Such history is important to courts when they are required to determine the legislative intent of a particular statute. A bill is "the draft of a proposed law from the time of its introduction in a legislative body through all the various stages in both houses." An act is the appropriate term for the bill after it has been enacted by legislature into law. After enactment, the terms "law" and "act" may be used interchangeably.

Compiling a Pennsylvania legislative history is something many attorneys practicing in Pennsylvania may have to do at some point in their legal career. While the prospect strikes fear in the heart of even the most seasoned attorney, it shouldn't. For the most part, preparing a legislative history is a very straight-forward procedure. Once you do it a few times, you may even begin to wonder what all the fuss was about. Of course, just like any legal research, not all legislative histories are as easy to prepare as others.

Older legislative histories, for example, can be quite time consuming because of inadequate indexing. Being armed with some basic facts and easy-to-follow instructions should help you in your pursuit of legislative materials. This article will attempt to do just that.

Getting Started
In Pennsylvania, the primary source for legislative history are debates and remarks on a particular bill, which are published in the Legislative Journals for the House and the Senate. Pennsylvania Legislative Journals can be found in the major law libraries in the state. There is certain information you need in order to compile a legislative history.

To begin, you must have the year and act number before you can get started. Note that a legislative history cannot be compiled on a particular section of an act, as there is no indexing by section numbers. The history must be compiled for the entire act, and then you can look for remarks dealing with your specific section. Keeping in mind the foregoing information, the following instructions will walk you through preparing a legislative history.

Identify the act number.
The act number can be found at the end of the Purdon's statute section. For example, in 1984, Feb. 12, P.L. 26, No.11 sec.3. effective Oct. 1. 1984, 11 is the act number, not 26. "P.L." stands for pamphlet law and refers to the page number the act starts on in the Laws Of Pennsylvania. If the act has been amended, you must decide which version you need. It is not unusual for an act to have several amendments.

Locate the bill number.
The act number must be converted into a bill number. The act numbers are arranged numerically in either the History of House Bills or the History of Senate Bills, companion volumes to the legislative journals. For an act from 1983 to the present, refer to the Q pages (pagination is by letter) in the History volume. Look at the chart to find the act number; the bill number is located in the next column. If the act was passed between the years 1969 and 1982, refer to the T pages in the Final House History or Final Senate History volumes.

Finally, if the act was passed prior to 1969, look in the table of contents for the chart entitled "Act Numbers of Bills on General Legislation Approved by the Governor". In addition, you should consult both indexes to the House and Senate Journals by the subject of the act and the bill number.

Find the history entry.
Once you have the bill number, you can locate the history entry arranged in numerical order in the respective history volume. The History of House Bills for House bills and the History of Senate Bills for Senate bills provides a brief summary of each bill and records its status through the legislative process.

Look for remarks or debate in the history entry.
For histories from 1960 to the present, look for wording like "Remarks, see House Journal, Page..." or "Remarks or Debate". If there are remarks or debate listed, you will find references by date and sometimes page number to the House or Senate Journal volumes. Often, there are no remarks or debate listed or the remarks or debate that you do find may not relate to the section of the act in which you are interested. Two additional sources for determining legislative intent are Committee Hearings and Reports.

Committee Action
The Pennsylvania Archives (717-783-3281) and the Senate Library (717-787-6120) maintain a back file of Pennsylvania hearings. These hearings can be accessed by date, sponsor, committee or subject. Committee hearings are usually held on legislation that is controversial or significant. In Pennsylvania, hearings are open to the public and newspapers often publish accounts of these hearings.

It is important to note however, that many proposals for legislation do not involve any hearings. Past committee reports can also be obtained from the archives and the Senate Library. Current reports may be obtained from legislative committees or the Senate Library. These are accessed by subject, committee, date or sponsor. Generally, these reports are not very substantive and are often limited in scope.

Electronic Ease
Electronic access to Pennsylvania legislation and histories greatly eases the research process. The full text of Pennsylvania House and Senate bills starting with the 1989-1990 regular session to the present session can be found at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/BI/billroom.htm. This site also includes a history summary for each bill.

Presently, Jenkins Law Library's Web site (http://www.jenkinslaw.org/collection/pa-leghist.php) is the only electronic source for already-compiled Pennsylvania legislative histories. A growing site, it contains approximately 150 histories from 1970 to the present that include the pages from the legislative journals containing the "Remarks and Debate" portion of the legislative history.

This information will make your next attempt at finding legislative intent for Pennsylvania acts a lot easier. As more material is added to the Internet, a once tedious research task will be completed at your desktop with a few clicks of a mouse.