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Research Guides for Illinois Statutes and Other Legislative Resources

Some of the documents linked on this page are in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). To read and print the Guides that are in PDF, you need the Adobe Reader. If your computer does not already have Adobe Reader software, you can download the free Adobe Reader here or via the accessible, text-only Adobe Reader download page.

Using the Illinois Compiled Statutes and Public Acts
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/using.asp
Illinois General Assembly

Legislative Reference Bureau of the Illinois General Assembly
http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb_home.html

• Researching Legislative History, by Richard C. Edwards, Executive Director
  http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/lrbres.htm
• Guide to Drafting Legislative Documents, by Richard C. Edwards, Executive Director
  http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/lrbguide.htm
• Illinois Compiled Statutes to Illinois Revised Statutes cross-reference (1992)
  http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/ilcsirs.htm
• Illinois Revised Statutes to Illinois Compiled Statutes cross-reference (1992)
  http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/irsilcs.htm
• Organization of the Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS), by Richard C. Edwards, Executive Director
  http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/lrbnew.htm
• Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS) and Alphabetical Index by Act (through Public Act 93-600)
  http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lrb/ilcsindex2003.pdf

How a Bill Becomes a Law in Illinois
http://www.ilga.gov/commission/lis/98bill_law.pdf
Legislative Information System of the Illinois General Assembly

How to Research an Illinois Legislative History
http://www.state.il.us/court/SupremeCourt/Library_Research.htm
Illinois Supreme Court Library

Illinois Legislative History Sources
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawlibrary/research/govt/illegis.htm
Pritzker Legal Research Center, Northwestern University School of Law: provides narrative explanation of legislative process and sources, along with links to official sources that are available electronically.

Legislation FAQs
http://www.isba.org/faq/legislationfaq.html
Illinois Bar Association

How a Bill Becomes a Law
http://www.housedem.state.il.us/billlaw.htm
Illinois House Democrats

James E. Duggan, Illinois Legislative History, 88 Ill. B.J. 665-66 (2000)
[available on Westlaw, 88 ILBJ 665]

Comparing Federal and Illinois Legislative History Research
http://www.law.siu.edu/lawlib/guides/FedIllLHcompared.pdf
Comparison of the federal and Illinois legislative processes and the legislative history documents produced at each step in the process.
Prepared by Frank Houdek for use in Lawyering Skills II.

Illinois Legislative History Research
http://www.law.siu.edu/lawlib/guides/Illleghist.pdf
Step-by-step guide to finding Illinois legislative history documents.
Prepared by Frank Houdek for use in Lawyering Skills II.

State Legislative History Research Guides on the Web
http://www.law.indiana.edu/library/services/sta_leg.shtml
Links to research guides and sources on the web for all 50 states.
Compiled by Jennifer Bryan, Documents Librarian, Indiana University Law Library-Bloomington.

To search the SIU Law Library catalog, for resources about Illinois legislation or Illinois legislative process, go to http://131.230.102.1/search:

For a narrower search, click on Subject and search for "Illinois legis". Then choose from the list of subjects on Illinois legislation or Illinois legislative topics.

For a broader search, click on WORDS and search for "Illinois legislat* ". The asterisk is a truncation device. This search will retrieve records that have the words Illinois and legislation or legislative in the title or other descriptive parts of the record.