Federal Legal Resources

  • Congress.gov – Congress.gov is the official website for federal legislative information. It is presented by the Library of Congress. A very good source for PDF versions of federal bills and bill status information. Links to the text of legislative documents including, hearings, reports, debates and public laws. It replaced the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov site.
  • Constitution of the United States – Text of the Constitution and links to other historical documents such as the Declaration of Independence.
  • Federal Agencies – Links to agency Web sites for news, directories and agency documents.
  • Federal Courts of Appeals and District Courts – Contains slip opinions for circuit, district and special federal courts with links to related agencies.
  • govinfo – Provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government. 
  • House of Representatives – Web pages of individual Representatives for biographical information, press releases and contact information. Descriptions of House committees and subcommittees with links to schedules and hearing transcripts. A good summary of the legislative process.
  • The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 – Includes nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court during the final years of Chief Justice John Marshall’s Court through the first ten years of the Warren Court. It contains scanned images, so documents appear just as they do in the printed sources. Full-text searching is available.
  • ProQuest Congressional – Bills, hearings, reports, committee prints, debates and public laws of the US Congress from 1789-present are indexed by subject, title, personal names, document numbers, and more. Full text is available for most documents. Full text of all documents indexed also can be found in the law library’s microform collection.
  • ProQuest Legislative Insight – Compiled federal legislative histories containing digital full-text versions of bills, Congressional Record debates, committee hearings, and reports for enacted U.S. Public Laws (1789 to present). Committee prints, CRS reports, and miscellaneous congressional publications are provided as background material. Presidential signing statements are also included.
  • ProQuest Regulatory Insight – Compiled regulatory histories associated with specific statutes and executive orders from 1936 to present. Organized by public law.
  • Senate – Home pages of Senators for biographical information, press releases and contact information. Descriptions of Senate committees and subcommittees with links to schedules and hearing transcripts.
  • Supreme Court Insight, 1975-2019 -- a complete collection of briefs, dockets, joint appendixes, oral arguments, opinions and other documents for each case decided by the Supreme Court during this time period. Also covers cases in which the petition for writ of certiorari was denied.
  • Supreme Court of the United States – Official Supreme Court site. Contains opinions from 1991-present, a brief overview of the Court, a listing of all justices and biographies of the current members, oral argument calendar and transcripts, and information about obtaining briefs. See this website on How the Court Works.
  • United States Code – Consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. Available through HeinOnline.
  • The White House – Video, audio and transcripts of major speeches by the President and members of his cabinet. Press releases, executive orders and proclamations. Links to cabinet member biographies.