An Overview of the
Congressional Record
and Its Predecessor Publications
by Richard J. McKinney, Assistant Law Librarian
Federal Reserve Board Law Library
Last revised in September, 2006
Originally published by the Law Librarians' Society of
Washington, D.C.
as an article in the Winter, 2002 issue of "Law Library Lights;" Vol. 46, No. 2
Current
PDF Version
[Annals] [Register] [Globe]
[Record] [Contents] [Digest] [Index]
[Appendix] [Electronic CR] [Citing]
[Senate] [House] [Notes]
House and Senate Journals
Article I, section five of the Constitution of the United States
provides that "each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings and from time to
time publish the same." Pursuant to this clause, the Journal of the United States
House of Representatives and the Journal of the United Sates Senate have
provided legislative action proceedings for their respective bodies since 1789. They
include no verbatim or summary remarks of debates - just the legislative minutes,
including congressional votes, history of bills, procedural matters, and Presidential
messages. Each Journal volume covers one congressional session. The Journal
of Executive Proceedings of the U.S. Senate, also published since 1789, covers Senate
action on nominations and treaties submitted by the Executive Branch. While most of the
material in the Journals can also be found in the publications discussed below, the
Journal indices and bill tables can be helpful in locating the debate on
pieces of legislation in those other publications.
The Annals of Congress
There was no precedent in colonial or English legislative practice
for more then just the keeping of official journals, but from early on unofficial
commercial reporters were allowed access to the House and Senate chambers.1
Thus, although for the first 41 congresses (85 years) there were no official government
publications that recorded congressional debate, newspaper and other commercial
publishers2 did record Congressional proceedings to the extent
they saw viable according to the limits on column space available, the political
leanings of the editors, the limits on existing shorthand methods, and the ability to hear
from the galleries or assigned floor areas.3
In 1834 commercial publishers Joseph Gales and William Seaton began collecting
and selectively publishing these early summaries of debates and legislative actions in
a publication called the Annals of Congress. 4
Organized by session in 42 volumes, and taking 22 years to compile and publish, the Annals
are recognized as the best source for coverage of Congress during the first 18
congresses, 1789 through 1824. Funds appropriated by Congress in 1849 assisted in its
production with each volume containing a separate index for House and Senate proceedings.
In addition, the Annals includes an appendix for each Congress containing public
laws and some executive reports. Records for each chamber in the Annals are
organized by congressional session and are numbered consecutively by column, not by page,
with two columns per page.
The Register of Debates
The Register of Debates in Congress, also published by Gales
and Seaton, was the first contemporaneous attempt to publish, what they claimed was, a
substantially accurate report of all the leading debates and incidents of Congress.5 The Register covers the years 1824 to 1837 (the
second session of the 18th Congress to the first session of the 25th Congress) and was
published at the end of each congressional session. Like the Annals, which was
actually compiled some ten years after the Register began, it is not a verbatim
account and was often written in the third person. Although selected reporters were
allowed on the House and Senate floor, stenography was still primitive at the time and
longhand was often employed. Some speeches that were deemed as lacking general interest
were not reported and members were invited to revise their remarks before the Register
was published at the end of the session.6 An appendix to each
session contained presidential messages, public laws, and selected executive department
and congressional committee reports. Separate indices to each House and Senate session and
to the appendix of the Register were also produced. Like the Annals, the Register
was numbered in consecutive columns, not pages, with two columns per page.
The Congressional Globe
Beginning in 1833, a newspaper type publication, the Congressional
Globe, began daily coverage of congressional proceedings, with bound cumulative
volumes being published at the end of a session.7 Published by
Francis Preston Blair and John Cook Rives, coverage continued to 1873 (the 23rd to
the 42nd Congress).8 The Globe, at least initially, was
not considered a verbatim account, but, according to its early subtitle, provided only
"sketches of the debates and proceedings". In contrast to the Register,
the Globe was thought to be more partisan with many members claiming to be
misrepresented or not reported at all.9 Members could,
however, submit a copy of the full text of their speeches to be included in an appendix to
be published at the end of a congressional session. Like the Register appendices to
the Globe also contained presidential messages, certain executive department
reports, and the text of public laws, but not congressional committee reports or hearings.10 By the middle of the 19th century, due to
improvements in shorthand and in congressional willingness to pay for the salaries of
reporters and for copies of their reports, the Globe became a more verbatim
account of congressional debates, and complaints against its reporters became fewer.11
The Congressional Globe is organized by congressional session
and arranged in consecutively numbered pages, with three columns per page. Although each Congressional
Globe volume represents one congressional session, after volume 14, covering the
second session of the 28th Congress (1844-1845), volume numbers were no longer
noted, or noted inconsistently, in the text of the Globe and were replaced by
the phrase "New Series". However,
many libraries have manually
appended volume numbers to the spines of the bound edition of the Globe according
to congressional session sequence based on the
table found in the Checklist of United States Public Documents:
1789-1909, 3rd ed., Vol. 1B, pp.
1466-69. Citations to the Globe, however, should normally be
by congress and session instead by volume number.12 For each
congressional session an index to House proceedings and to Senate proceeding was published
as well as a separate index for the appendix. Beginning with the 40th Congress
(1867-1869) the index to the Globe also included a history of House and Senate
bills and resolutions, which was continued by its successor publication.
The Congressional Record
The Congressional Record began publication in 1873
(43rd Congress) when Congress decided that it would be more economical and
satisfactory to publish its debates and proceedings under its own direction.13
Since that time, whenever Congress has been in session, the Record has been published
daily by the Government Printing Office (GPO) on newspaper quality paper. Each Congressional
Record volume covers one congressional session with consecutively numbered pages. A permanent
hardbound edition of the Congressional Record on better quality paper is
published after the conclusion of a congressional session, but the numeric sequence of
pages differs significantly from the numeric sequence of the daily edition. For a
number of decades, in addition to the daily and permanent editions of the Congressional
Record, GPO also published a biweekly edition (basically a duplication of the daily
edition) that was glued together inside a thick green paper cover with its own index. This
"green-back" edition was discontinued in 1985 at the same time that the daily
edition was glued together, instead of being stapled, inside a thick white paper covering.
The Record has varied in length over the years and varies
from day to day. A single days issuance could be a few pages to hundreds of pages with
multiple parts. Volume 1 covering the first session of the 43rd Congress (December 1, 1873
to June 15, 1874), contains 5500 pages. Volume 147, covering the first session of the
107th Congress (January 3 to December 20, 2001), contains 27,572 pages. In general the
size of the Congressional Record gradually became larger over the years until it
peaked in the 1970's when it was not uncommon to have well over 40,000 pages a session. In
the past decade the range has been around 15,000 to 30,000 pages per congressional
session.
Until volume 87 (77th Congress; 1941-1942) a two column per
page format was used in the Congressional Record and since that time a three column
format has been employed. It was also during the 77th Congress that began
the standard two-session congress with the first session beginning in January on an
odd numbered year and the second session beginning in January on an even numbered year.
Before that time it was not uncommon to have two to four sessions in one congress and
sometimes the first session may not even commence until December in the year that followed
a general election. Since 1941 congressional sessions have pretty much followed the
calendar year, with sessions being longer on odd years when there is no general election
and shorter on even years, when there is a general election.14
The legal authority for publishing the Congressional Record is
found in Title 44 USC 901-910.
The Joint Committee on Printing, established in 1895 (Title 44 USC 101-103) has oversight of
the Record and all congressional printing, but legislative authority is vested in
the House Committee on House Administration and the Senate Committee on Rules and
Administration.15
General Contents of the Congressional Record
The Congressional Record contains House and Senate floor
proceedings, substantially verbatim transcripts of floor debate and remarks, notice of all
bills introduced, full text of all conference committee reports, notices of committee and
Presidential actions and communications, and statements or documents submitted by members
of Congress for publication. Non-substantive changes can be made by members before the
daily edition is published and again before the hardbound permanent edition is published.
The daily edition is usually available the morning after that day's proceedings. The bound
edition usually takes several years to be published after a congressional session ends.
The text of bills, as passed by a chamber, are normally published in
the Record, but generally the text of bills as introduced, reported, or enrolled
for the President's signature, are not published in the Record. One exception to
this is in the "Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions" area in
the Senate proceedings that, since 1971, is published after a list of newly
introduced bills and additional cosponsors. In the statements area most newly
introduced Senate bills will be commented upon by their sponsors and
"frequently" they are accompanied by the full text of the bill. Comments on
newly introduced House bills are sometimes inserted in the Extension of Remarks section,
but usually not with the text of the bill. The text of standing committee reports and
hearings are almost never printed in the Record, but the text of conference
committee reports have always been printed within it, usually in the House
proceedings. Conference committee reports contain the agreed decisions or text of joint
House-Senate conferences on a bill. They also frequently contain detailed joint
explanatory statements on the compromise text as well, and as such, are usually quite
valuable in discerning legislative intent.
Beginning with volume 113 (90th Congress; 1967) the pages
for the daily edition of the Congressional Record are consecutively numbered
within a congressional session, but they start with a letter corresponding to different
sections in each issue: S (Senate proceedings), H (House proceedings), E (Extension of
Remarks), and D (Daily Digest).16 In alternate days either
the House proceedings or the Senate proceedings lead off the day's Record, with the
Extensions of Remarks section placed behind them, and at the very back of all the daily
issues is the Daily Digest section. In the daily edition of the Record, between the
Extension of Remarks and Daily Digest sections, on various days during the week, is placed
a list of members of Congress, member committee assignments, House and Senate officers,
Supreme Court justices with the circuits assigned to them, and a helpful page entitled
"Laws and Rules for
Publication of the Congressional Record."
The Daily Digest
Beginning with volume 93 (1st session, 80th
Congress; 1947), each day's issue of the Congressional Record began to be
accompanied by a "Daily Digest", which summarizes Senate and House chamber
and committee actions with cites to page numbers in that day's proceedings. The daily
digests, placed in the back of the daily edition, are later published together in the
hardbound permanent edition of the Congressional Record as a separate book (final
part) for each session volume with the references to pages in the bound edition. New
public laws and committee meetings and floor schedules for the following day or week are
also noted in the Daily Digest of the daily edition, but not in the bound edition. At the
end of the daily edition of the Daily Digest is an explanation on how to obtain access or
a subscription to the Congressional Record.
The Daily Digest is very helpful in finding particular proceedings in
the Record, and it is generally the only place where most all hearings and
committee actions are noted in the Record.
The Congressional Record Index
A subject index to the daily Congressional Record is
published covering a two-week period. This biweekly index is later cumulated into a
bound volume index covering an entire congressional session but cites to pages in the
bound edition not the daily one. The material in the index is organized alphabetically by
subject or last name and it notes and cites to the bills, remarks, letters, and other
items in the Record. Not until volume 129 (1983) are dates noted in this index. The
bound permanent index, which has been a part of the Congressional Record from its
beginning, is normally the last part published in a session volume series and it is
usually released some five or six years after the end of a congressional session.
From the beginning the Index to the bound Congressional Record
has always been accompanied by a separate Senate and House "History of Bills and
Resolutions." Within it all Senate and House measures are listed with notes and
citations to page numbers where activity can found in the bound Congressional Record.
Notations to dates with the page numbers have only been given since volume 142 (1996). The
biweekly index also contains a history of bills and resolutions, but it only covers
measures that have had some action during the biweekly period. Hearings are not noted
in these histories and while beginning page numbers to debates are noted the debates may
continue for multiple pages without being so noted. Remarks on newly introduced bills are
also not noted, but they can be found using the index. Finally it is important to
understand that a bill's history may have prior or subsequent notations in a previous or
subsequent session of the same congress.
Appendices and Extensions of Remarks
Besides the proceedings and index, an appendix, containing daily
extensions of remarks and inserted documents has almost always been a part of the Congressional
Record, but it has had a varied history. Since the days of the Register of
Debates (1825-1837) members of Congress have had the opportunity to add speeches or
revisions to remarks not delivered on the floor. This, as well as other material (see
above), was normally placed in an appendix to the debates at the end of a congressional
session. The practice was continued in the Congressional Record with members,
usually from the House, being free to withhold their remarks for revision or to insert
speeches and other material under "leave to print" motions that were later
placed in an appendix to the Record. From volumes 1 through 57 (43rd -
65th congresses; 1873-1919) appendices to the bound edition of the Congressional
Record for each congressional session had their own consecutive pagination with
the phrase "Appendix to the Congressional Record" at the top of each page. This
early Appendix also had its own index and was either bound with the debates and
proceedings or with the regular index.
In volumes 58 to 62 (66th Congress through the second
session of the 67th Congress; 1919-1922) pagination to the bound Appendix
continued from the consecutive sequence in the proceedings and the Appendix no longer had
its own index. Then, beginning with volume 63 (third session of the 67th
Congress, 1923), the Appendix to the bound Congressional Record ceases and does not
reappear until volume 81. However, during this time the daily edition of the Record
still continued to have an appendix with speeches and inserts not said on the floor. By
unanimous request such material was frequently placed in the main body of the Senate
proceedings, but this was seldom the case in the proceedings of the House. Unanimous
requests to insert material was often objected to by some members of the House and
apparently the rules of the House and the Joint Committee on Printing called for greater
discipline as well.17 Thus, during this time (1923-1936)
most of the inserted material from the House was never included in the permanent bound Congressional
Record, nor was it indexed anywhere. However, inserted material on the Senate side was
often included in the main body of its proceedings and is noted in the Congressional
Record Index.
Beginning with the volume 81 (75th Congress, 1st
session, 1937) the Appendix is again published in the bound Congressional Record
with notes to its pages in the bound Index. Pagination in this new Appendix series is
consecutively numbered in a separate format from the debates and proceedings, and starting
with volume 87 (77th Congress, 1st Session, 1941) each page numeral
in the appendix begins with the letter "A".
Commencing with volume 100 ( 83rd Congress, 2nd
Session, 1954), the Appendix to the daily edition was dropped altogether from the bound
version of the Congressional Record until volume 113 (90th Congress, 1st
Sess.; 1967 only). During this thirteen year period from 1954 through 1966, only
material in the daily Appendix that was considered germane to Senate and House proceedings
was published in the bound Congressional Record and incorporated in an
"Extensions of Remarks" section which was placed after the daily House or Senate
proceedings. Material in the daily Appendix that was not considered germane, such as
reprinted editorials, articles, speeches by executive branch officials and the like, was
not printed in the bound Congressional Record during that time. 18
However, this non-germane material was still being noted and cited in the annual bound Congressional
Record Index. Consequently, many libraries have collected the pages of the daily
Appendix, with its newspaper quality paper, bound the pages together by session, and
placed the books alongside their corresponding Congressional Record volumes. Some
microform editions of the bound Congressional Record also carry the daily Appendix
for this time period.
Beginning with volume 113 (90th Congress, 1st
Sess., 1967) in the daily edition, "extensions of remarks" were consecutively
numbered with the letter E in front of each numeral. The bound Congressional Record
for 1967 has a separately numbered Appendix with all the daily extensions of remarks, but beginning
with volume 114 (90th Congress, 2nd Sess.,1968) of the bound
edition, an Extensions of Remarks section of both germane and non-germane matters, is
placed after the House and Senate proceedings on a daily basis and all pages are numbered
consecutively within a congressional session.
The Extension of Remarks section in the Record has for several
decades been almost exclusively used by members of the House, as members of the Senate
generally use unanimous request procedures to insert documents they want published.
Electronic Sources and Links to the Congressional Record
As early as 1985, a full-text electronic version of the daily
edition of the Congressional Record has been available on LexisNexis and
Westlaw and it is available on CQ's OnCongress.com from 1987, on THOMAS from 1989,
and on GalleryWatch.com from 1999 forward. Links to Congressional Record pages are
also provided in the bill tracking services of CQ's On Congress (from 1987), LexisNexis
(from 1989), GalleryWatch.com (from 1999) and THOMAS (from 1999). Bill status summaries on
THOMAS with notes of actions by date go back to the 93rd Congress (1973). CQ's
online Record Scanner, which provides Congressional Record abstracts, goes back
until 1987.19
Beginning in 1994, the Government Printing Office, through
its own on-line service, GPO Access, has made the daily Record available via
the Internet or dial-in mode and from 1995 forward it is available there in PDF format.
GPO Access also has available a cumulative annual Congressional Record Index to
the daily edition as well as a "History of Bills" (but not resolutions) from
1983 to the present with citations to the daily edition. However, the history of bills does not
include page number and date citations until 1993.
Currently, only volume 145 (1999) of the bound Congressional Record is available
electronically through GPO Access.
However, the situation is quite different for
early predecessor publications to the Congressional Record because the Library of
Congress, through its American Memory Project,20 has
optically scanned all the early series, including the complete Annals of Congress,
Register of Debates, and Congressional Globe, as well as the early Senate
and House Journals from 1789 to 1873. While these online works are not word
searchable there are a number of indices and navigators to the publications that are word
searchable.
Besides the Congressional Record, which is a
"substantially" verbatim account of House and Senate proceedings, C-SPAN has
been recording and transmitting televised coverage of House proceeding since March 29,
1979 and Senate proceedings since June 2, 1986.21 Thus in
determining legislative intent, some courts have preferred using C-SPAN audio tapes.22
Citing to the Congressional Record
In citing to the Congressional Record the Blue Book23 recommends the following samples: 123 CONG.
REC. 17,147 (1977) or 131 CONG. REC. S11,465-66 (daily ed. Sept. 13, 1985) (statement of Sen. Wallop).
Examples from the Blue Book for predecessor publications include the following: CONG. GLOBE, 36th Cong., 1st
Sess. 1672 (1860); 10 REG. DEB. 3472 (1874);
and 38 ANNALS OF CONG.
624 (1822). An example of a Congressional Research Service cite is "Annunzio, Frank.
Notice to House Members. Congressional Record, v. 131, Sept. 4, 1985, p.
22835." 24 If the daily edition is being cited then
"(daily edition)" or "(Daily Edition)" or "(Daily ed.)"
should be placed just after the phrase "Congressional Record." The month
can be abbreviated or written in full, but the important point is that enough
information be given so that readers know exactly where to find a particular cite.
To obtain a Congressional Record document by citation method
on LexisNexis (daily edition only) you can use the following format: 142 Cong. Rec. H
10357, with a space between the H and the numeral. The same format can be used on Westlaw
(also daily edition only) but without the space (142 Cong. Rec. S10357). Both Lexis and
Westlaw have the daily Record back to 1985 (vol. 131), but only Lexis has document
by citation retrieval capability back to 1985 (99th Congress), while Westlaw
has that capability from 1992 (vol. 138; 2nd session of the 102nd
Congress) to the present.
At this time about the only electronic version of the Record is of the
daily edition as there is only one volume of electronic version of the permanent bound edition to
the Congressional Record.25
Once the permanent bound edition of the Congressional
Record becomes available it is considered the proper source to cite. However, it
generally takes more than a half decade after the conclusion of a congressional session
before the Government Printing Office publishes all the parts of a session volume of the
permanent bound Record, including its index. Even after a permanent volume of the Record
has been published there is no easy method for determining a bound pagination cite if
all you have is a cite to the daily edition. You must try to use the bound index or
daily digest and try to hunt for the passage in question looking perhaps for a key phrase
at the beginning of a paragraph in the approximate area under a particular heading in the
proper day and section of the bound Record. Sometimes pages in the daily edition
and bound edition look like mirror images of one another and the job is a little easier.
Remember, if all you have are photocopied pages from the Congressional Record, page
numbers from the daily edition will, after 1966, always have a letter before the numeral,
but beware of concluding that straight numeric numbered pages are from bound edition if
they occur before 1967. As noted earlier, even before 1967, because the Record is
reorganized, there is no correspondence in the numeric pagination of the bound Record
and the daily Record.
Flow of Senate Proceedings and Publication in the Record
Since 1971, the flow and publication of Senate proceedings and debate
have generally followed a common pattern. The Senate is called to order by the presiding
officer who, according to the Constitution, is the Vice President of the United States,
but since the mid-twentieth century the Senate is usually chaired by the President pro
tempore (the Senator with the most seniority in the majority party) or the Acting
President pro tempore designated by him or her. The Presiding officer refers to himself
or herself as the chair and is addressed as Mr. President or Madam President.
A typical Senate day is begun by prayer and followed by an explanation
by the majority leader of the day's schedule. Next is the transaction of routine morning
business. This includes most procedural matters, such as the receipt of presidential
messages, executive communications, and messages from the House, the filing of committee
reports, the introduction of bills and resolutions, and other matters, and concludes with
miscellaneous floor speeches delivered by various Senators under prearranged "special
orders" (usually no more than five minutes each). After morning business
legislative measures are then considered and debated but these may be interrupted by
other non-germane speeches from Senators recognized by the presiding officer. Senate
debate is generally unlimited by time or subject matter.
Although morning business precedes Senate debate in time, since
1971, most of the items in the morning business are generally placed in the Record
after measures being considered and debated. Also since 1971, after the listing of
measures introduced, most senators will have inserted into the Record a statement
on the bill they are introducing and often the text as well. Commencing in 1983 the text
of proposed amendments follows these statements on measures introduced and then by
"additional statements" not delivered on the floor. These statements, not
spoken on the floor of the Senate, are indicated (since 1978) by a bullet dot at the
beginning and ending of the speech. Many other types of documents like correspondence,
selected testimony and news articles are frequently inserted into the Record as
well. At the end of the Senate proceedings is a list of nominations by the President to
the Executive branch to be confirmed by the Senate.
The Senate has a seven member team of professional stenographers who
are present on the floor and who are responsible to take down all that is spoken and
all the business transacted, sometimes moving from senator to senator. The stenographers,
known as "Official Reporters of Debate," are skilled in shorthand and the use of
stenographic machines, and are also knowledgeable on parliamentary procedure. They work in
10 minute shifts and immediately after a shift, a reporter will have his or her notes
transcribed, edited, and within an hour made available to relevant senators. Under Senate
rules senators are permitted to make minor corrections to their remarks, but no
substantive changes.26
Flow of House Proceedings and Publication in the Record
The arrangement of proceedings and debate in the House differs from
that in the Senate. Being a much larger body, the House has always provided for
stricter controls, including the adoption of rules setting the conditions for debating
a legislative measure. The chair for the House is the Speaker of the House of
Representatives elected by the majority of members of that Congress. In his absence a
Speaker pro tempore, designated by the Speaker, presides over the House. The chair is
addressed as Mr. Speaker or Madam Speaker. After the opening prayer and approval of
the last day's journal, members are given permission to make floor speeches on topics of
their choice. After this comes the consideration of various legislative measures. However,
before a controversial bill is debated, a resolution setting conditions for the debate may
be debated and voted upon. It is the Rules Committee, controlled by the leadership of the
majority party, that sets these rules and, and unlike the Senate, unlimited amendments and
debate is rarely an option in any rule. Many non-controversial measures are passed
without a roll call vote under a rule suspension. During a debate articles and
correspondence may be submitted and printed in smaller type in the Record.
Since 1978, speeches not delivered on the House floor are generally printed in a different
type face.27
After the debate on legislative matters the chair usually
recognizes many members to speak on various issues under prearranged special orders
(usually for five minutes). The full text of any conference report is also printed
under these special orders. A listing of the special orders granted is then printed
followed by a listing of extensions of remarks granted and a list of bills referred from
the Senate, signed by the House or presented to the President. Typically then, a member
moves to adjourn.
At the back of the House proceedings are placed listings of executive
branch communications, reports from committees, bills and resolutions, additional
cosponsors of measures, and the few amendments permitted by House rules. In a separate
section are the "Extension of Remarks" which are speeches or inserts not made on
the House floor usually given as a tribute to some person or organization or as a
statement about a bill recently introduced.
The House also has a team of stenographers covering its chamber,
but unlike the Senate, the House member in control of the floor at the time is the one who
receives the transcript and has the responsibility of returning it. Other members who have
spoken during the time period will normally be shown the transcript by the member in
control. After various transcripts are reviewed by senior reporters the material, together
with the Senate transcripts, are delivered to the Government Printing Office, usually
beginning around 4:00 p.m. Deliveries continue every 45 minutes throughout the evening
until all transcripts have been delivered. By 1:15 a.m. typesetting is usually completed,
and by 2:30 a.m. the proofreading is complete. By 3:30 a.m. page makeup is completed and
by 4:45 a.m. the last plate goes to press. Copies of the Congressional Record on
proceedings from the day before are normally available on the Hill before Congress
convenes the next day.28 Sometimes, if a late night
session causes delay or if materials in the Record are particularly lengthy then
the Record that day may divided into more than one issue or part and be published
the following day. Daily issues which are very short are often combined with one or more
subsequent issues and printed and released with them.29
Conclusion
The Congressional Record, remarkable in its size, content, and
turn around time, is a unique source of American public documentation. Nearly all the
major and minor policies and concerns of the day are discussed and debated in its pages.
It is likely to be with us for a long time to come, but the format in which we read it has
changed and no doubt will continue to change in the future.
Endnotes
1 Elizabeth G. McPherson, Reporting the Debates of
Congress, 28 QUAR. J. SPEECH 141-142 (1942).
While reporters were allowed access to the House of Representatives as early as April 8,
1789, the Senate did not open its doors to reporters until December 9, 1795, and it was
not until January 6, 1802, that the Senate voted to admit reporters on its actual floor.
2 MILDRED L. AMER, THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD; CONTENT, HISTORY AND ISSUES 2-4 (CRS
Report 93-60) (Jan. 14, 1993). Early commercial publications that covered Congress
included the New York Daily Gazette, the Philadelphia Gazette, the Congressional Register,
the National Intelligencer and others.
3 Peggy Garvin, Before the Record, 32 LAW
LIB. LIGHTS 1 (Jan./Feb., 1989)
4 The formal title of the Annals of Congress is The
Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States. After the first few volumes
were printed in 1834 the publication was halted until 1846 when Congress appropriated money for its completion which occured in 1856.
During the second effort the first few volumes of the Annals were reprinted and repaginated. Thus for the first few
congresses page citations to the Annals may differ depending on the edition used.
The first few volumes were reprint
5 Preface and title to volume one of the Register
of Debates in Congress.
6 McPherson, p. 144.
7 Originally, the Globe appears to have been issued
every few days at 16 page intervals, whether or not a sentence or a day's proceedings was
completed. Eventually, Congress stipulated that its proceedings be published daily. See
Act of March 2, 1865, Chap. 73 at Sec. 7, 13 Stat. 460.
8 For its first few volumes the Globe was published
contemporaneously with the Register until the later ceased publication after the
first session of the 25th Congress (1837).
9 McPherson, p. 145-146. Blair & Rives owed their
appointments to President Andrew Jackson and were considered by some as supportive of the
Democratic Party. Members of the Democratic Party had heretofore complained that their
remarks were sometimes left out or shortened in the Register of Debates.
10 LAURENCE F. SCHMECKEBIER
& ROY B. EASTIN, GOVERNMENT
PUBLICATIONS AND THEIR USE 139 (2nd ed. 1969).
11 McPherson, p. 147. After the introduction and adoption of
the phonetic shorthand method of Issac Pitman by the Senate in 1848 and by the House in
1850, near verbatim reporting of congressional debate became a reality for the first time
and complaints against reporters were noticeably fewer.
12 Schmeckebier, p. 138.
13 Amer, p. 5. Annual appropriations had been provided to
report congressional debate since 1863 and the Congressional Record only began
after the contract with the publisher of the Congressional Globe had expired on
March 3, 1873, at the end of the 42nd Congress.
14 See
Sessions of Congress with Corresponding Debate Record Volume Numbers (LLSDC.org).
See also Resumes of Congressional
Activity (THOMAS.loc.gov).
15 Amer, p. 6 and 28 Stat. 603.
16 Quartertly statements on newly registered lobbyists were
published in the daily and bound editions of the Congressional Record until volume
142 (1996). In the daily edition these page numbers began with an "HL".
17 See 65 CONG. REC.
337-38 (1923), 68 CONG. REC. 1045-46 (1928),
69 CONG. REC. 3863-64 (1929), 72 CONG. REC. 1316 (1930), and 75 CONG.
REC. 3330-31 (1932).
18 Schmeckebier, p. 139-141.
19 See RICHARD J. MCKINNEY,
INTERNET AND ONLINE SOURCES OF LEGISLATIVE AND REGULATORY INFORMATION (2005)at http://www.llsdc.org/sourcebook/docs/internet.pdf.
20 The relevant collection is entitled A Century of
Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774-1873. See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html.
21 For a discussion of the gradual growth of televised
proceedings see: Joe Morehead, Congress and the Congressional Record: A Magical Mystery
Tour, 13 SERIALS LIBRARIAN 66-69 (1987).
22 JOE MOREHEAD, INTRODUCTION TO UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SOURCES 101 (1996).
23 THE BLUE BOOK: A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION 95 (17th ed. Harv. Law Rev. Associa-tion) (2000).
24 Amer, p. 20.
25 Volume 145 (1999) of the bound
Congressional Record has recently been loaded unto GPO Access and subsequent years will follow.
A prototype CD ROM for volume 131 (1985) of the bound edition was produced by GPO, but it was not continued in
later editions. The Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC.com) has begun to digitize its microform edition
of the bound Congressional Record and has reportedly digitized volumes 136-147 (1990-2001).
26 Amer., p. 12.
27 For a discussion of the convoluted use of bullets and
different type faces in the Congressional Record see Joe Morehead, Congress and the
Congressional Record: A Magical Mystery Tour, 13 SERIALS LIBRARIAN 61-66 (1987).
28 Amer, p. 13.
29 The "Laws and Rules for
Publication of the Congressional Record", adopted by the Joint Committee on
Printing, is published on most days in the daily edition of the Congressional Record
right before the Daily Digest section.
