big policy project

Legislative history, aka what solutions have been offered before

Take notes WHILE YOU RESEARCH: create a document where you paste links of potentially useful articles, so that you can read them later. Note dates of those articles.

You are looking for:
what government action has been taken before? Because it is PUBLIC POLICY, it has to be government (city, state, federal). [e.g. sanctuary city is the city level, contradicting federal level.

did any scientists or social scientists contribute to the debate?

What solutions by private organizations have been adopted before?

Research process:
Do you want to find the history or to write the history? To find published history: 1. Library of Congress; 2. Law Librarians’ Society Legislative Sourcebook. 3. Google; 4. Specialized paid databases (ask librarian); 5. Free access databases (see attached image for the list)

Citation:
The complete paper should have citation TWICE:
1. inside the text “according to”
2.at the end full citation: Author, Title, Publisher, Date, url. Note: for government sources, use issuing agency (house, number, session, year) for “author”

The actual paper should:

• report what action has been proposed or taken on fixing your issue; Include dates! Are these actions federal, state, city, private organizations, wards?
• identify who is mainly proposing solutions
• evaluate: are these actions/policies sufficient? are they working? Why or why not?

General tips:
The tone should be civil and constructive
Legislative history is interpretive
Look for original intent