Legislative History:  Official Sources 

• House & Senate Journals:  Hansell Room with Georgia documents (Range 366)
• Chronological by legislative day, bills referred, whether passed, vote counts, roll call votes, committee actions
• Bill titles, amendments, sponsors
• May include bill text, text of amendments, or summary, no reports or debates
• Indexes by subject & bill numbers
  • In older volumes, try code amendments in the subject index
• Project adding journals to Galileo Government Publications databases 1982-2011, eventually from 1956
• Available at Emory:
• Senate Journals:  1815, 1816,  1913, 1927, 1931-present
• House Journals:  1922, 1929-present
• Georgia Laws (preambles or legislative findings)
• Compare versions of bills
• Older documents including bills may be available at the Georgia Archives
• No floor debates, official committee reports, hearings published
• Georgia General Assembly website includes bill versions, final status & summaries, committee links

Legislative History:  Unofficial Sources

• Georgia State University Law Review Peach Sheets (Review of Selected Georgia Legislation)
  • Annual fall issues, began 1985
  • Include code section, bill number, summary, history, provisions, analysis
  • Compiled from news articles, interviews, review of General Assembly video and documents
  • Only select legislation, including some that did not pass
  • Table of Code sections affected, bill index
  • Peach Sheets in the GSU Digital Archive by year, 1984-2007, searchable, e-mail and RSS notification available and with GSU Law Review volumes (volume 1-latest)
    
    • Abstracts, with pdf downloads
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  • Available in the GSU Law Review issues on Westlaw, Lexis, Hein Online
• Mercer Law Review Annual Survey of Georgia Law
  • Developments in Georgia law by subject area, including legislation and major court decisions
  • Issues since 1994 available on the Mercer Law School website
  • Also available on Hein, Westlaw, and Lexis
  • Mercer Law Review also publishes an annual Eleventh Circuit Survey
• Westlaw:  GA-LH database
  • Information from the House and Senate Journals and from the General Assembly, includes bill histories, voting records, committee amendments, House and Senate Daily Reports, Governor's messages, news releases
• Lexis:  Georgia Legislative Bill Histories
  • 2001-current
  • Documents include bill analyses, governor's messages, committee reports, summary amendments
• Hein Session Laws
  • Georgia legislation 1735-2010
• Newspaper articles on the Georgia legislature, especially Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Lexis 1991-current
  • Atlanta Constitution on Proquest Historical Newspapers 1868-1945
  • Atlanta Constitution 1868-2001 and Atlanta Journal-Constitution 2001- recent on microfilm at Woodruff
  • Other Georgia historic newspapers:  Digital Library of Georgia

Using Georgia Legislative History

• UGA Law School research guide:  Researching the History of an Enacted Georgia Statute
• For a discussion of the uses of Georgia legislative history and its reception by Georgia courts, see Georgia Statutory Construction: The Use of Legislative History, Ga. B. J., April 1996, at 30