BUSINESS: Government Legislation

Use the Internet with caution, not everything out there is good or true. Below is an evaluation form designed to get you to think critically about any website you visit. It may not be required, but it might be a good idea to attach it to the work you turn in, typically behind the reference page. It will show that your are trying to be a critical user of information.

Searching the internet can lead to some great resources. It can also lead to a lot of bad, incorrect or just outdated material. One corrective to that is to limit your searches to quality sites. Within most search engines there is the ability to limit your searches to .edu, .gov, or .org. Those three domains represent educational institutions in the US, government websites, and non-profit organization sites, respectively.

Searching with Google or DuckDuckGo, you can add the limiter, "site:" to your query. Immediately after the colon you put the dot and domain limiter you wish. One example would be, "healthcare reform site:.edu". That would search just educational institutions for "healthcare reform" documents.

It would also be a good idea to evaluate what your returned, so use the "Website Evaluation Form" found above.

Here is the link to the United States legislative site. It is called THOMAS and is hosted by the Library of Congress. It was created in 1995, but has some material that dates back to the 1970's.

The basic search is fairly good, but is limited to the current congress. To search for past legislation you will need to go to the "advanced search" page.

On the Advanced Search page you can pick which congress and then select the bill number, a key phrase, or the authoring/sponsoring member.

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Here is the link to the State of California's legislative site. The site also has a section that deals with "California Law" which has the constitution of the State of California as well as state codes.

The website has two main search formats. If you know the sponsor, the number of the bill, or other information about it, you will search using the "Bill Search". The key to making this work, is you must know the "Session Year". Without the "Session Year", you will have to search the same information again and again, but just change the session year.

If you do not have details, but know some quotes from the text of the bill, even key phrases, you will search using "Text Search".