Using CQ LawTrack

Updated: March 2009

Overview

CQ LawTrack helps you untangle the sometimes complicated relationship between pending legislation and existing laws, while also providing historical information on existing laws and statutes.

Bills refer to current law in a variety of ways -- by the name of a law, by statute cite, by the public law number (e.g., PL 110-246) and by U.S. Code cite just to name a few. This can make it very difficult to determine what a bill actually intends to do from reading the text alone.

With CQ LawTrack, we pull together all of the existing law each bill would affect in one glanceable list.

From there you can:

If your starting point is a public law, we will show you which pre-existing public laws and U.S. Code sections your law changed, which subsequent laws changed your law, and which pending bills would change your law.

If your starting point is a U.S. Code section, we provide the complete history of public laws that amended that section of the Code, and any current bills that would have an impact.

If E-Mail Alerts are part of your subscription, you can create alerts to notify you whenever there is a new bill, or new version of the text of a bill, that would change the laws you care about.

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How do I start?

Starting from the CQ LawTrack page, you can search by the following:

You can also use existing law, word and bill lists on the CQ LawTrack search form, or create your own lists.

If the search options are not appearing on the page, click "More search options"

Alternatively, you can use links on the left side of the page to browse Public Laws by PL Number or Act Name, or to browse CQ's version of the US Code.

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What will I see on a CQ LawTrack Card?

Once you search for a bill, law, or section of the U.S. Code, the resulting CQ LawTrack card will provide you with information on how your selected item or items would affect existing law, or how they would be or have been affected by other legislation.

What you see in CQ LawTrack will depend on what you searched for. The number of changes for each category is displayed, so at a glance you can judge the extent of impact.

If you search for bills, the CQ LawTrack card will show the provisions of current law that would be changed by the bill, under the heading "The language of this bill would change X laws":

If you search for a section of the U.S. Code, the CQ LawTrack card will show the following, when applicable:

If you search for a public law, the CQ LawTrack card will show the following, as applicable:

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What can I do with the information on a CQ LawTrack Card?

Where you go next depends on your goals.

Get the full text of the bill, law, or US Code section: Click on the top bar of the CQ LawTrack card and the full text of the bill, law or U.S. Code section will pop up in another window. Additionally, the references to public laws, bills and US Code sections in the text are inline links you can use to continue to explore the context.

See which parts of a bill or law affected a section of a law or the U.S. Code: The CQ LawTrack card includes a hit list of the provisions of law that would be changed by a bill, or that were changed by a law. At the end of each item, there is a note showing how many changes would be made, or were made. If you click on the number of changes, an annotated bill or law text will pop up. The window includes a clickable hitlist to show you where in the bill a change occurs, and the bill or law text will also have a number corresponding to an item in the hit list.

Get the CQ LawTrack for anything you see: Click on the yellow box with arrows on the left of any impact to switch your focus to the impact for a law, bill, or U.S. Code section.

Get the full text for anything you see: Click on the blue text to see the full text of that law, bill, or US Code section.

See CQ analysis on the bill as it became a public law: The "Quick Links" box on the right takes you to related CQ coverage on a bill or public law, including bill actions, CQ Bill Analysis and other documents.

Note: The complete text of public laws, with inline linking, is available for all public laws since the 106th Congress (1999-2000). PDFs are available for all public laws, going back to the 1st Congress. For public laws prior to the 106th Congress, the full text links on the impact cards go to the PDF version of the law.

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