Legislative History and Intent: Finding the Documents to Help Understand the Law

No-cost, free MCLE event

1 hour participatory California MCLE credit

Program Description

Finding legislative history and legislative intent is a task that sounds daunting because it involves a lot of work.

Well, yes, it’s true, there can be lot of work to determine the legislative intent of a code.

But the process is easier if you remember the steps for how a bill becomes a law and know where to find the documents created during that process.

This session will go through the legislative process and identify the documents created during the bill-making process, where these documents can be located, and who to contact if you need more information. Then, we’ll go through the process again with a recent bill to reiterate the steps. Finally, we’ll briefly discuss other options for obtaining the legislative history and intent for your law.

About the presenter

Pauline Afuso is the Assistant Librarian for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Library in Pasadena, CA, and she provides reference and research assistance to judges, court staff, and patrons needing legal information.  She was formerly the Public Services Librarian at the Alameda County Law Library.  In addition to working in county law libraries, she has worked as a reference librarian at Paul Hastings and at the USC Law Library.  She was also a product developer at Thomson Reuters where she oversaw the creation, release, and maintenance of several research features for Westlaw.  She received her MLS from UCLA and her JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law.  She spends her free time experimenting with recipes on the NY Times Cooking App and listening to Minnesota Wild hockey games on the radio.