LibGuides: Duke Law in D.C.: Federal Law & Policy Online

Introduction

Current federal law and policy material can be readily accessed online. This tab provides quick access to primary legal sources as well as news and analysis about them.

News & Analysis

America's News: Full-text of US newspapers generally dating back to the early 1990s.
CQ Press Electronic Library: Policy news and analysis from Congressional Quarterly.
CRS Reports via ProQuest Congressional: Analysis from the Congressional Research Service, 1916-present.
Government Accountability Office: analysis and oversight of government spending activity.
ProQuest: index and full-text for thousands of newspapers, including The New York Times.

Legislation, Statutes & Codes

Statutes & Codes

Public and Private Laws via FDsys, 1994-present
Statutes at Large library in HeinOnline: U.S. public and private laws, 1789-present
U.S. Code: PDF & text versions from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel
U.S. Code Library in HeinOnline: historical code versions in PDF [1926-present]

Bill Text & Tracking

Congress.gov: Bill text & tracking service from the Library of Congress, with links to reports, debates, and other materials where available.
OpenCongress: includes RSS feeds for individual bills.
Lexis Advance: path Browse Sources > enter Bill Tracking into "Search Sources" box at left.
WestlawNext: path Statutes & Court Rules > Bill Tracking at right.

Legislative History Materials

Legislative History research guide from Goodson Law Library provides more detail and options for accessing legislative history materials.
FDsys: free access to congressional committee reports, hearings, debates, generally from mid-1990s to present.
ProQuest Congressional: full-text of congressional hearings (1824-present), Congressional Research Service reports (1916-present), committee reports (1995-present) and indexes to federal legislative materials dating back to 1789.
ProQuest Legislative Insight: compiled legislative histories for enacted federal legislation, dating back to the 1800s.
U.S. Congressional Serial Set online, 1817-1994: full-text of pre-1995 committee reports and other congressional publications.
U.S. Federal Legislative History library in HeinOnline: access to compiled legislative histories for selected federal laws, 1789-present.

Regulations

The Federal Administrative Law Research Guide describes sources for executive branch material in more detail, including how to access on LexisNexis and Westlaw. Highlighted below are a mix of free and subscription sources for key administrative materials.

Proposed and Recent Regulations

FederalRegister.gov [dynamic searchable version]
Federal Register at FDsys [PDF & text]
Office of the Federal Register Public Inspection Desk: tomorrow's FR contents, 1 business day ahead
Historical Federal Register in HeinOnline [1936- ]

Promulgated Regulations

Code of Federal Regulations [PDF & text]
E-CFR [unofficial version from Government Printing Office, updated in 1-2 days]
Historical CFR in HeinOnline [1938- ]

Agency Materials

Case Law

Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg provide access to a wealth of case law and filings from the federal and state court systems. Other sources for case law are: