Congressional Research Service Reports

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for members and committees of the United States Congress. An arm of the Library of Congress, the agency is renowned for its non-partisanship and its in-depth analysis of issues. CRS Reports provide valuable insight into how Congress makes decisions and are excellent sources for determining historical and current legal frameworks on domestic and international issues. You would think that these reports would be readily available to the public, but unfortunately they're not. (See "Congressional Policy Concerning The Distribution of CRS Written Products to the Public".) There currently are only a limited number of CRS Reports available on the Internet.

However, the good news is that the Hastings Law Library has an online subscription to full-text CRS Reports and Issue Briefs from January 2003 to present. This subscription also includes an index to CRS Reports issued since 1995. This database is updated weekly and access is restricted to users on campus. If you can't find the CRS Report you are looking for in this full-text database, then perhaps you can: 1) find the title of the report listed in the index and then, 2) search the sites below to find the report. The list below includes some of the best freely accessible sites for locating CRS Reports online.

• The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has created the "Open CRS" website, which offers a searchable, consolidated archive of several large online CRS collections. • The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries has produced its own archive of CRS reports. It is even larger than the above mentioned CDT collection. • An excellent Guide to CRS Reports is available at LLRX. This guide provides an historical introduction to CRS Reports (over 1,000 written reports are published yearly), and links to the various online sources for the reports. • The Thurgood Marshall Law Library has an online collection of CRS Reports focusing on Homeland Security and Health Law. • The Law Librarians' Society of Washington D.C. has attempted to create a list of most of the CRS Reports available on the Internet. • Other good CRS websites include: - University of Washington School of Law - University of Oregon Libraries - zFacts.com CRS search page - The Memory Hole CRS page - House Rules Committee - National Library for the Environment - House Judiciary Committee (no longer current) - GPO Gate (no longer current) - US Embassy: Italy - First Amendment Center

If you can't find your report, and you know the title, you might try using a phrase search on Google. For example, try "The USA Patriot Act: a Sketch" as your search. If the report is on the Internet, you should get a link to a copy of the report in the first few results. Or, you can try the new Google application at http://2act.org/p/576.html, which will find most (not all) CRS reports.

Last updated July 5, 2005 Prepared by Reference Librarian