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California Legislative History and Advocacy

URL: https://libguides.law.ucla.edu/callegislativehistory

What are the Senate and Assembly Journals?

The Senate and Assembly Journals summarize what happened each day on the floor of the Senate and Assembly, including which bills were introduced, referred to committee, received from committee, debated, amended, voted on, referred to the governor, or signed and vetoed by the governor.

Journals do not provide verbatim transcripts of debates or the full text of bills but do provide votes on each bill and may sometimes provide the text of amendments, resolutions, and signing and veto messages.

Both the Assembly and Senate produce:

  • Daily Journal: Summarizing what happened at the end of the previous day.
  • Assembly Journal or Senate Journal: Summarizing what happened in each year or two year legislative session.

The Assembly's Office of the Chief Clerk has produced two guides explaining how to read the Daily Journals:

Free Websites for Senate and Assembly Journals

Print Copies of Senate and Assembly Journals

The UCLA law library also has copies of the journals in print: