1. What is a legislative history?

Legislative history is the record of the actions and documents produced by the lawmaking process. The content and use of legislative history research can vary greatly depending on who is doing the research and how the information is used; however, legislative history is frequently used within the practice and creation of law. In legal practice, legislative history is often used to help determine legislative intent when interpreting a statute. Legislative history is used by attorneys and judges to aid in their interpretation and application of a statute when the statute’s meaning is in dispute, by administrative agencies to aid in their interpretation and application of the statutes authorizing them to draft rules and perform their enforcement and administrative duties, and by legislators and legislative staff to inform the development of new legislation.

2. What is the Legislative History Collection?

The Law and Legislative Reference Library’s Legislative History Collection is an online repository of precompiled legislative histories for all bills considered by the Maine Legislature from the 110th Legislature (1981-1982) through present. These legislative histories are compiled by the staff of the Law and Legislative Reference Library.

3. What is included in the Law Library’s legislative histories?

The Law Library’s individual legislative histories generally include the following items: the history and final disposition of the bill, the original bill, the committee file and public hearing recordings, proposed and enacted amendments, floor proceedings and debate from the Legislative Record, the enacted law, reports, bill and enacted law summaries published by the Office of Policy and Legal Analysis, and citations from the Law Library’s news collection. Not all items are available for all time periods. For example, committee files are not available for bills introduced before 1983.

The Law Library’s legislative histories are a great place to start your legislative history research, but further research may be required depending on the purpose and scope of the research. For example, relatively few legislative histories include reports or other documents. The Law Library is adding them to the legislative histories as they are discovered and digitized. Reports that are included in the legislative histories are generally very closely linked to that specific bill to the exclusion of reports that might be related broadly by subject matter and time period. Government reports can be found by searching the library catalog. Attorneys seeking legislative history materials to present to the court should consult case law and other authorities on statutory construction.  

4. How do I find the legislative history for a particular law or bill?

Users can retrieve legislative histories using a session law citation (year and chapter number), LD or paper number (accompanied by the year), or keywords describing a bill or act. First, select a legislative session by number or year in the “Select Legislature” dropdown menu. Then, select the chapter number, LD number, or paper number from the corresponding drop-down menus. If you are searching by keyword, consult the bill and law indexes at the bottom of the page. Page references within the indexes provide links to the related legislative histories.

5. How do I get a copy of documents cited in the legislative history that don’t have a link?

Please contact the Law Library to request copies of committee files, news clippings, and court cases.

6. What does ONTP mean?

“ONTP” is legislative shorthand for “Ought Not to Pass.” Other commonly used abbreviations in this collection include “OTP” for “Ought to Pass,” “OTP-AM” for “Ought to Pass as Amended,” and “OTP-ND” for “Ought to Pass in New Draft.”

7. How soon are legislative histories available after the end of a legislative session?

Availability depends on the publication and processing of certain components of the legislative histories. In general, legislative histories from a regular session will appear shortly before the next regular session. If you need legislative history materials before the compiled legislative histories are available, please contact Law Library.

8. What is a topical legislative history?

The Law Library has also compiled over thirty topical legislative histories. They can be divided into two categories. Topical legislative histories, such as Minimum Wage and Administrative Procedures Act, are complete statutory histories of individual statutes or units of the statutes. Topical legislative histories, such as Abortion and Smoking and Cigarette Legislation, are lists of bills on these topics. Consult the scope note at the top of each topical legislative history for details about its coverage.

9. How does legislative history differ from statutory history?

The legislature enacts laws in chronological order, which makes it difficult to determine what the law is on a specific topic at a given point in time. For that reason, the laws enacted by the legislature, called session laws or chapter laws, are codified into statutes, which are a subject arrangement of the law. A statute may be affected by numerous session laws. Technically, legislative history is the compilation of the actions and documents related to a single session law. A statutory history addresses the changes to a statute (or statutes) over time. Statutory histories can span decades or even centuries and may consist of multiple individual legislative histories. Please see the Law Library’s statutory history too for more information.

10. What if I need further assistance?

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact the Law Library. If you would like to speak with a reference librarian, call 207-287-1600 Mondays through Fridays, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Eastern time. If you would prefer to email us, use our  “Ask a Law Librarian” contact form.