California Legislative History and Advocacy

Bill analyses are prepared by legislative staff to help legislators and the public understand bills. These include:

• Floor analyses: Prepared by legislative staff before each vote or other action taken on the main floor of the California Senate or California Assembly. 
• Committee analyses: Prepared by legislative staff before each committee hearing on a bill. 

Bill analyses are generally one of the most helpful items of California legislative history because they provide useful information on why the bill was introduced, whether there were any previous or simultaneous related bills, who opposed and supported the legislation, and the arguments made for and against the legislation. 

Additionally, bill analyses can provide persuasive evidence of legislative intent. Although analyses are created by legislative staff, rather than legislators themselves, you can feel reasonably confident that most legislators were aware of the arguments and facts presented in the bill analyses when voting on the bill. 

Bill analyses in and after 1999 are readily available from the California legislature's LegInfo website:

The bill analyses on Lexis and Westlaw are available and easier to read on the California legislature's website, so, if you are trying to locate bill analyses for a specific bill, there is usually no advantage to locating bill analyses on Lexis and Westlaw. However, Lexis' and Westlaw's bill analyses can be useful if you want to search across bill analyses for multiple bills. (For example, to see what bills a particular lobbying group has supported or opposed and why.)

You can access bill analyses on Lexis and Westlaw at the following links:

The now-defunct Assembly Office of Research formerly prepared bill analyses, which are available at the law library in microfiche:

If you have not used microfiche before, feel free to ask a reference librarian for help.

UCLA also owns a handful of print bill analyses from the California Senate Judiciary Committee, published between 1989 and 1992. These analyses are at the Southern Regional Library Facility, a storage facility located on the UCLA campus. To request them, access the catalog entry linked below: