1. What is the Legislative Record?

The Legislative Record contains the proceedings and debate of the Maine State Legislature. It has been published since 1897. The Clerk of the House publishes the Journal and Legislative Record of the House of Representatives. The Secretary of the Senate publishes the Senate Legislative Record.

The Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate are constitutionally obligated to publish journals of proceedings (see Maine Constitution Art. IV, Part 3rd, Sec. 5). The Senate Journal runs continuously since 1820 and the House Journal was published from 1820-2016 (starting in the 128th Legislature, the House publishes a combined Journal and Legislative Record). The journals have not been widely distributed since the early 19th century; therefore, the Legislative Record is the preferred source for legislative history research for the time period since 1897.

The Legislative Record for the current session is available on the House and Senate websites. All volumes of the Legislative Record for previous sessions (back to 1897) are available through the Law and Legislative Digital Library. Print volumes of the Legislative Record are located in the Law Library and are available for loan.

4. How is the Legislative Record Archive organized?

The online edition of the Legislative Record is arranged by Legislature, and then by session day. Within each Legislature, session days are listed chronologically, with House days on the left and Senate days on the right. The First Regular Session will be at the top of the list, with subsequent regular, confirmation, and special sessions listed below. Each session day entry includes the date, the chamber (House or Senate), and the pages of the Legislative Record for that day’s proceedings.

The opening page is the cover sheet identifying the Maine State Legislature as the source of the document. The second page is the title page from the printed version of the Legislative Record. The Legislative Record text for the session day follows the title page.

5. How do I find debate if I don’t know the date it happened or the page number?

Most of the Legislative Record sessions include one or more indexes. For these sessions, the indexes will be found linked in bold above the session days to which they refer. Earlier sessions have a different index for each session. For example, if you select the 112th Session, you will find different indexes for the 1st Regular Session, the 2nd Special Session or the 4th Confirmation Session. These indexes cover both the House and Senate. For more recent sessions, the indexes cover only the House or the Senate, but they cover all sessions for that chamber. These indexes are linked at the top of the page before any of the session day links. For example, if you are looking for Senate debate from the 119th session, choose the 119th Legislature and then select the Senate index at the top of the Senate session day links.

6. How do I find debate relating to a specific bill?

For some sessions legislative documents (“LDs” or bills) have been indexed by number. This practice began with the 109th Legislature. For the 109th through the 117th Legislatures, the LD number index is integrated within the legislative session index under the subject heading “Legislative Documents.” For example, to find LD 128 in the 109th session, look in the index for “Legislative Documents” and then locate the entry for LD 128. Beginning with the 118th session, the House provides a separate LD number index, whereas the Senate includes the LD number topically within the general Senate index. All indexes are linked at the top of the session days for each Legislature.

7. Can I search the Legislative Record?

Optical character recognition (ORC) has been applied to all digitized pages of the Legislative Record to make the text searchable. Nevertheless, omissions or errors might occur as part of the OCR process. To be on the safe side, researchers may want to conduct research manually, as described above, in addition to any searching.

8. I need help finding debate.

For bills introduced from 1981 to the most recent previous session, debate can be found using the Law Library’s individual legislative histories.

If you have any questions or comments about researching Maine legislative debate, please feel free to contact us. If you would like to speak with a reference librarian, call 207-287-1600 Mondays through Fridays, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Eastern time. If you would prefer to email us, use our “Ask a Law Librarian” contact form.