Regulatory history refers to the process that a piece of proposed rulemaking goes through before it becomes a regulation. It consists of the documents created during that process. This typically includes Federal Register notices, proposed rules, and final rules representing the complete rulemaking process associated with specific Public Laws or Executive Orders.
Regulatory history research is often conducted to investigate why an agency created a particular regulation or to assist scholars, lawyers, and judges in interpreting a regulation.
ProQuest Regulatory Insight (available on campus or remotely with ASURITE)
This ProQuest database provides access to administrative law histories organized by public law number and allows you to locate all regulatory actions associated with a specific CFR part or U.S. Code section. It also has Federal Register documents available for 1977-present and the Code of Federal Regulations for 1991-present.
When no pre-existing regulatory history is available for the regulation you are researching, you will need to gather the relevant Federal Register and other rulemaking documents yourself. The steps in a federal regulatory history research process are below.
The Library of Congress has also developed a useful guide on conducting your own regulatory history, entitled How to Trace Federal Regulations. The guide addresses the basics of how to trace a federal regulation, in order to not only derive its statutory authority, but also to learn more about its history and origins.
Step 1: Locate the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) section you are researching
Many researchers begin their regulatory history research with a CFR citation. You can access the CFR in a variety of ways. Please consult the Code of Federal Regulations box of this guide for information on free and subscription sources of the CFR.
Step 2: Review the CFR Authority Note
Administrative agencies must have been specifically granted authority by Congress in order to promulgate a rule or regulation. The CFR provides information on the statutory authority for the promulgation of a specific rule within the authority note. The authority note typically can be found at the beginning of a larger unit of the CFR, such as a Part or Subpart. The authority note lists the statute(s) that authorized the federal agency to promulgate the particular rule or regulation.
Step 3: Review the CFR Source Note
The source note portion of a CFR section provides information on when a rule or regulation was published in the Federal Register. This information is useful to researchers because it allows them to learn more about the rule's history and origins through its prior Federal Register publications. Typically a rule is published twice in the Federal Register, once as a proposed rule in order to notify the public and allow an opportunity to comment, and again as the final version of the rule. There may be additional publications of a given rule as well, such as when a proposed rule is revised.
The source note can typically be found at the beginning of a larger unit of the CFR, such as a Part or Subpart, or may appear in brackets after a particular provision. The source note will provide one or more citations to the Federal Register. You can access the Federal Register in a variety of ways. Please consult the Federal Register box of this guide for information on free and subscription sources of the Federal Register.
Step 4: Locate the Final Rule in the Federal Register
The Federal Register citations listed in the CFR source note will lead you to the regulation's final rule publication, which for many researchers is the end goal of their research. While the text of the rule itself will not provide information on the rule's purpose and context, by navigating back to the "preamble" section of the final rule (the section immediately before the text of the rule) you can find a summary of the rule, information on how the CFR will be amended to reflect the new rule, and often a description of the problem the rule was designed to address, an explanation of how the rule will address that problem, a summary of public comments on the proposed rule, and descriptions of studies or reports that the agency may have authorized before instituting the rule.
If you are interested in accessing the proposed rule or other Federal Register publications of a specific regulation, look at the "background" section of the final rule to find a Federal Register citation to the proposed rule.
Step 5: Next Steps
Depending on your research, it may be necessary to contact the office or agency that promulgated the rule for more information. In the final rule, there is often contact information for an individual within the office or agency under the "for further information contact" section. This person can be an excellent source of information. In addition, the final rule may also include a Regulation Identifier Number (RIN), an agency or docket number, or a document number, under which additional documents related to the rule may be available through the promulgating agency. You can submit requests to the agency using the identification numbers provided for access to those documents.