For More Information

What's a website without a links page? Here are some other websites that you may find helpful.

Check out the Civics 101 primer from citizenJoe or Government 101 from Project Vote Smart to learn how a bill becomes a law. It's so much more interesting than you learned in grade school! Sunlight's Insanely Useful Websites list indexes some of the most important independent websites providing a view into Congress and the White House.

General Information on Legislation

• The House of Representatives and the Senate websites have more information on vacancies, procedures, committees, etc.
• OpenCongress Wiki is a place to collaborate on documenting and analyzing what is happening in Congress.
• Metavid is a database of video recording from the House and Senate floor.
• The Government Printing Office has some additional documents.
• For historical documents: The Library of Congress: Century of Lawmaking feature has scans of bills and resolutions from 1799-1873, laws (i.e. Statutes at Large) from 1789-1875, and other early records. Statutes from 1789-1919 can be found at Early United States Statutes. Other founding and early documents from 1775-1814 can be found at the Library of Congress web guide for primary documents in American History, and various other important documents can be found at OurDocuments.gov and NARA's Charters of Freedom.

Digging into Legislation and Spending

• The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan arm of Congress, writes research reports at the request of Members of Congress. CRS does not have a website, but the independent OpenCRS.net collects those reports.
• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan arm of Congress, issues reports on the costs of legislation.
• Taxpayers for Common Sense, EarmarkWatch.org, Earmarks.omb.gov, and WashingtonWatch track earmark requests and earmarks in major legislation.
• USASpending.gov and FedSpending.org are databases of federal contracts and grants.

Campaign Finance, Lobbying, and Congressioanl Staff

• The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP; opensecrets.org) tracks campaign contributions, representatives' financial disclosures and travel, lobbyists, and the lobbyist lives of representatives after they leave Congress.
• LegiStorm publishes Congressional staff salaries.

Candidates and Positions

• Project Vote Smart works tirelessly to collect information on candidates for office, issue positions, and some summaries of legislative events.

Other Aspects of Federal Law

• The United States Code (Statutes): Statutory law is the component of U.S. law that is enacted by the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Code is the compilation of statutory law, pieced together from the text of the bills enacted by Congress. The text of the U.S. Code can be read at the Cornell Legal Information Institute website. More information can be found at the Library of Congress. (You can also get the Code from the GPO and The House.) And of course you can track the statutory-law-making process right here on GovTrack.
• The Code of Federal Regulations and the Register: The U.S. Congress has delegated authority to executive-branch agencies to create regulations, and this is the component of law created by and controlled by the executive branch of government. Regulations are considered a part of the U.S. law. Rule-making is the process of creating regulations, and public-comment periods are often required. This process is published in the Federal Register, which you can access at Regulations.gov or the independent site OpenRegulations.org. The compilation of regulations is called the Code of Federal Regulations, which you can read online at GPOAccess. GPO maintains an exclusive ability to publish the CFR, much to the chagrin of open government advocates.
• Common Law / Case Law: Common law is the aspect of law that results from judicial decisions. The United States at the time of the revolution generally inherited the common law of England. Today, the common law is the result of rulings of the judicial branch of the government. Case law in the United States, the decisions that determine common law, has been in the past notoriously privileged to lawyers and those who can pay for access to its only publications by private companies. You can find court opinions at Justia, Cornell's Legal Information Institute, FindLaw, or AltLaw.org.
• The U.S. Constitution: The U.S. Constitution outlines the structure of government, supersedes any other aspect of law, and is the hardest aspect of law to change. It and the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the constitution, are the only founding documents that are a part of law.

State Law and Legislation

The first thing to try to find state law and legislation is to look for your state's official websites with a web search (such as "New York legislature"). More information can be found at NCSL 50-State Legislative Tracking Web Resources and Full-text state statutes and legislation on the Internet. Here are some independent websites that address legislative tracking at the state level, by state:

• Massachusetts: OpenMass.org
• Illinois: IllinoisTrack.us
• Virginia: Richmond Sunlight
• Washington: Knowledge as Power