The field of law covers so much ground, it can often be difficult to understand what one law or piece of legislation is attempting to communicate. For this reasons, legislative intent is a particularly tough nut to crack, as they say. If you tried to, however, the breakdown would be a bit like this.
Laws are sometimes difficult to interpret for a number of reasons, most often because of the language that’s been used to express them. Despite the legal profession’s efforts to use precise wording and syntax via “legalese,” not every law and statute reads perfectly and clearly to folks in later generations. When such a situation arises — when a piece of legislation is unclear or ambiguous — a court may decide to look into the legislative history of that particular law in order to help clarify its meaning.
This is, obviously, a fairly large undertaking and requires quite a bit of in-depth legal research in order to prove successful. Luckily for the court, there are typically a number of supplementary documents it can access that could potentially shed light on the meaning of the unclear law. These are called legislative history or legislative research components. Below, we’ll explain what a court could reasonably expect from four of them.
1. The text of the law itself
When it comes to ambiguous federal statutes and regulations, the text itself is likely not going to be of much help to you in determining their meanings. But they’re still necessary to have on hand when viewing all the supplementary material in order to properly connect it to the language of the bill and put everything in context.
2. Official committee reports
Some of the most helpful pieces to your legislative research can often be these reports, which typically state what the purpose of the bill initially was. Additionally, the reports, which are usually the first pieces of communication a committee had with the United States Congress, also contain the recommendations put forth about passing the bill. As such, they tend to offer unique insight into the meanings of the particular bills in question.
3. Amendments to the bill
Sometimes, bills need a bit of tweaking after they’re officially passed. Look no further than the U.S. Constitution’s own Bill of Rights for proof of that. In terms of legislative research, these amendments can end up being quite helpful in pinpointing exactly what the objections to the initial bill were, which can often help present-day courts find them as well.
4. Recorded hearings and debates about the bill
What would politics be without some good, old-fashioned disagreement? But in all seriousness, debating and hearings help legislators avoid exactly the kind of shortcomings that can result from using ambiguous language in a law that eventually gets passed. These discussions can be incredibly worthwhile when weighing the meaning of a particular piece of legislation.