Legislative history includes any of various materials generated in the course of creating legislation

Legislation

Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...

, such as committee reports, analysis by legislative counsel, committee hearings, floor debates, and histories of actions taken. Legislative history is used for discovering sources of information about the legislative intent

Legislative intent

In law, the legislative intent of the legislature in enacting legislation may sometimes be considered by the judiciary when interpreting the law...

.

Sweden

Swedish courts frequently avail themselves of the legislative history (förarbeten, literally "travaux préparatoires

Travaux préparatoires

The travaux préparatoires are the official record of a negotiation. Sometimes published, the "travaux" are often useful in clarifying the intentions of a treaty or other instrument...

") in interpreting the law. Valid documents of legislative history are often taken to be official government reports

Statens offentliga utredningar

Statens offentliga utredningar , "Swedish Government Official Reports", is the official series of reports of committees appointed by the Swedish Government for the analysis of issues in anticipation of a proposed legislation....

, the bills presented by the Government before the Riksdag

Parliament of Sweden

The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...

, statements made by the responsible minister at the Government session where the bill was adopted, the report on the bill by the relevant Riksdag committee (utskottsbetänkande), and statements made by the responsible minister during the debate in the Riksdag.

United Kingdom

Prior to 1993 looking into the Parliamentary records

Hansard

Hansard is the name of the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard, an early printer and publisher of these transcripts.-Origins:...

 to aid interpretation would have been perceived as a breach of Parliamentary privilege

Parliamentary privilege

Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made related to one's duties as a legislator. It is common in countries whose constitutions are...

; however the House of Lords

Judicial functions of the House of Lords

The House of Lords, in addition to having a legislative function, historically also had a judicial function. It functioned as a court of first instance for the trials of peers, for impeachment cases, and as a court of last resort within the United Kingdom. In the latter case the House's...

 ruled in Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 593

Pepper v Hart

Pepper v Hart [1992] UKHL 3, is a landmark decision of the House of Lords on the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation...

 that it could do so in specific circumstances.

United States

The use of legislative history - usually as a tool of intentionalism - can be controversial. Judge Alex Kozinski

Alex Kozinski

Alex Kozinski is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, an essayist, and a judicial commentator.-Biography:...

 summed up the concerns as follows:

1. The two Houses and the President agree on the text of statutes, not on committee reports or floor statements. To give substantive effect to this flotsam and jetsam
   Flotsam and jetsam
   In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict describe specific kinds of wreck.The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in the law of admiralty and marine salvage....
   
   of the legislative process is to short-circuit the constitutional scheme for making law.
2. Collective intent is an oxymoron. Congress is not a thinking entity; it is a group of individuals, each of whom may or may not have an "intent" as to any particular provision of the statute. But to look for congressional intent is to engage in anthropomorphism--to search for something that cannot be found because it does not exist.
3. Even if there were such a thing as congressional intent, and even if it could be divined, it wouldn't matter. What matters is what Congress does, not what it intends to do. So, in our hypothetical case, it matters not that Congress intended to delete section 666 from the crime bill; what matters is what it did, and what it did was to pass the bill with the section included.
4. Even if the other obstacles could be overcome, reliance on legislative history actually makes statutes more difficult to interpret by casting doubt on otherwise clear language. This makes it much more difficult for people to conform their conduct to the law, as no one can tell what the law is until a court has weighed the language, the legislative history, the policy considerations, and other relevant information. This increases litigation costs and undermines the rule of law.
5. Legislative history is often contradictory, giving courts a chance to pick and choose those bits which support the result the judges want to reach. In Judge Leventhal's immortal phrase, consulting legislative history is like "looking over a crowd of people and picking out your friends." n24 This shifts power from the Congress and the President--who, after all, are charged with writing the laws--to unelected judges. The more sources a court can consult in deciding how to interpret a statute, the more likely the interpretation will reflect the policy judgments of the judges and not that of the political branches.
6. Allowing legislative history to do work that should be done by statutory language leads to political unaccountability. Members of Congress who reach an impasse can agree on murky language, then salt the legislative record with clues and hints hoping to shift the process of interpretation their way. Elected officials can thus achieve substantive results without having to take the political responsibility that would come from passing clear-cut statutory language.
7. Shifting important policy judgments to the courts brings the judiciary into disrepute and undermines the notion that judges apply the law objectively. When the public comes to understand that judges are simply unelected, life-tenured bureaucrats dressed in black, making policy decisions just like other government officials, the moral authority of the courts will be seriously undermined and popular obeisance to the courts' constitutional judgments will be jeopardized.

(A. Kozinski, Should Reading Legislative History Be an Impeachable Offense?,31 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 807 (1998) at 813-814)

External links

• Federal Legislative History Research: A Practitioner's Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent
• Legislative Histories of Selected U.S. Laws on the Internet
• State Legislatures, State Laws and State Regulations: Web Site Links and Telephone Numbers
• Zimmerman Research Guide- State Legislative History
• State Legislative History Research Guides on the Web
• State Legislative History
• The Textualist Jurisprudence of Justice Scalia By Ralph A. Rossum, Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism, Claremont McKenna College
• Legislative History of Federal Statutes Research Guide from the Mississippi State University Libraries