LexisNexis® Congressional
House Unpublished Hearings Collections (HUPs) o content from 1833‐1972 included in Digital Hearings Collection A o new content from 1973‐1979 available as an add‐on module starting in Dec 2010 Senate Unpublished Hearings Collections (SUPs) o content from 1924‐1979 included in Digital Hearings Collection A o content from 1980‐ 1983 included in Digital Hearings Collection B o content from 1984‐forward available as add‐on modules from Dec 2011 Unpublished Hearings Collections: Useful for Law Schools There are no statutory requirements governing the publication of committee hearings. Hearings that are not published are sent to NARA where they will remain inaccessible to the public for 20 years (Senate), 30 years (House) or even 50 years or longer as deemed necessary for security or privacy issues. The material must go through a screening process at NARA before it is released. The specific content of any unpublished hearings collection is always a bit of a surprise since no one knows exactly what will be in the collection until it is screened and released. Our unpublished hearings collections that are already on‐line contain thousands of publications related to Public Laws. In addition to transcripts of unpublished hearings, the collections include: •
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Executive session hearings Conference sessions Business meetings Markups “Possible additional leg. material ‐ unpublished bill drafts, cmte markup amendments, cmte markup descriptions, press releases, draft conf. report, conferee transcripts, news articles, correspondence, and reports from exec. agencies or CBO, GAO, & CRS” Federal Legislative History Research: A Practitioner's Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent Part of LLSDC's Legislative Source Book http://www.llsdc.org/Fed‐Leg‐Hist/ Mark‐Up Sessions Q: Why are mark‐up sessions included in the unpublished hearings collections? A: In our published hearings collection, sometimes markup sessions are included in the published hearings volume. If the committee publishes a separate markup volume we will cover that as well in the published hearings collection. In general, markups are frequently not published and are hard to find. In the unpublished hearings collection, the committee never had the chance to decide to publish it with a hearing or publish it separately because the hearings were never published at all. If we find markup sessions at NARA in with the unpublished hearings, we will include them. Q: Why are mark‐ups important? A: Markups are important because they are: • Hard to find • May be associated with a Public Law • May be cited in court cases (e.g. Scalia’s opinion in Jerman v. Carlyle) • May be viewed as possible additions to a complete legislative history • Helpful to researchers writing law review articles about specific laws “As suggested above, most legislation that receives attention by a full committee has been previously considered by a subcommittee, which may or may not have debated and revised the original text during a “markup” session. However, the changes made during subcommittee markup and the reasons for them may be difficult to determine; subcommittees do not issue a formal report of its action on the legislation.” Legislative History: A Basic Guide for Constituents http://www.lexisnexis.com/congcomp/getdoc?CRDC‐ID=CRS‐2002‐AML‐0027