Legislative Materials

Bill, Act, and Resolve Distinguished

An understanding of legislative records and materials will require a knowledge of the distinctions between various actions of the Legislature. Properly, a legislative act is the complete formally declared will of the Legislature; and is to be distinguished from a bill which is strictly the draft of a proposed act, prior to its enactment as law. Act, law and statute are generally used synonymously. Acts are broadly divided into public laws and private and special laws. A public law relates to public matters and deals with individuals by class only rather than to individuals, as such. A private and special law is a law for the benefit of one or several specified persons, corporations, institutions, municipalities, et cetera, individually, and operates in connection with particular persons and private affairs which do not concern the public at large. A resolve is neither an act, law nor statute, but merely a formal expression of legislative opinion concerning a limited and temporary matter which has the force and effect of law. The Legislature publishes a verbatim record of the proceedings of both House and Senate, which provides an excellent source of information on the debates in each branch during the regular and special sessions of the Legislature. The Legislative Record was first published in 1897. There are no official publications of the State which fully report the debates of the Legislature prior to that date.

Records of Legislative Proceedings

The proceedings of the Senate and House of Representatives are recorded in the Journals of the respective branches of the Legislature. The journals were produced annually from 1820-1880; biennially, from 1881-1975; and annually from 1977. The journals were produced annually from 1820-1880; biennially, from 1881-1975; and annually from 1977. The journals of both houses were published and distributed from time to time by legislative authority; but this policy was neither consistent nor continuous, and finally abandoned in 1925. The earliest published journal is that of the Senate in 1854; of the House, 1855.

Legislative Papers and Documents

The Legislative Documents are the materials ordered printed by the Legislature. Each Legislative Document is assigned a Legislative Document Number and the number of documents in the series runs consecutively from 1 to the number of the last Legislative Document printed during the session. The Legislative Document series consists primarily of the bills and resolves introduced during a particular session; but also may include such materials as reports, amendments and redrafts of legislation. Basic guidance in drafting and processing legislative text is provided by the Manual for Legislative Drafting published by the Director of Legislative Research in 1980. The original bill or resolve prepared by the Office of Legislative Research is the basic document for consideration by the Legislature, and the only document to which amendments are permitted to be drawn. The Legislative Documents for the sessions from 1833 to 1867 are included in the collected public documents of the State. References to the Legislative Documents collected in the Maine Public Documents will be found in the Index to Maine Public Documents, 1834-1867, printed in the Thirty-Second Report of the Librarian of the Maine State Library, for the Years 1905 and 1906, and in Hasse's Index of Economic Material in Documents of the States of the United States. The Legislative Documents for each Legislature were separately collected and indexed from 1868 to 1929. Those collected in the Legislative Documents series from 1947 to date will be found indexed in the Register of All Bills and Resolves published by legislative authority. Typed indexes to the Legislative Documents for 1933-1945 are available at the State Law Library.

The so-called "original papers" are the original drafts of the acts and resolves which were passed by the Legislature, together with related papers and documents. The papers themselves are an invaluable source of information, and are well worth examining if the subject of research involves a particular act or resolve passed by the Legislature. The original papers for the laws from 1820-1901 are numbered consecutively in series of 1- 500, without regard to the actual number passed during a particular session. The resolves were numbered in the same manner, but this was changed in 1872 so that they were numbered consecutively from 1 to the number of the last resolve passed during the session. The numbering of the laws continued according to the original method until 1901. There is no special correlation between the chapter number of an act or resolve published in the session laws and the number used in filing the original papers for it. One explanation for this is that while the published laws are differentiated as to public laws and private and special laws, the original enrolled copies of the acts, as well as the original papers, are not. Consequently, the only practical way of locating a docket of original papers is to determine the chapter number of the enrolled copy, and check to see if by using it the original papers can be located. The Maine State Archives is developing additional finding aids for the original papers as agency resources permit.

The so-called "Legislative Graveyard" consists of bills that failed of enactment and various reports and communications. Part of these records were indexed by the Secretary of the Senate when they were originally filed; and copies of the indexes to the files were printed in the Senate Journals for various sessions between 1865-1876. At one time Sprague's Journal of Maine History published exerpts from the files under the title Maine's Legislative Graveyard - From Bills, Acts, Resolves, and Memorials, Discarded by Maine Legislatures since 1820. The files of individual legislators accumulated by the Office of Legislative Research which contain the drafts of legislation prepared by that office are routinely transferred to the Maine State Archives at the end of each biennium for research use. The confidentiality of individual legislator files in the Office of Legislative Research is protected by statute during the biennium in which they are created; and information from the files may not be disclosed by the Office except with the express authorization of the particular legislator.

Page updated December 8, 2005

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Legislative Materials