Documenting Florida Legislative Intent

• chart
• explanation

The Committee Process

The Committee Process

• Following the text in the statutes is a history note identifying the law(s) which created or amended that section.
• Use the year, chapter, and section number to locate the enacted bill in the Laws of Florida volumes.
• If there is more than one law cited in the history, the researcher will probably need to look at each one.

NOTE: The annotations following the text in the statutes may be useful for locating cases or law review articles about the specific statute. Although those materials are not part of the legislative history, they might help the researcher understand issues regarding the statute. The researcher conducting a comprehensive search should consult both the West and LexisNexis versions of the statutes since the annotations may differ.

• Use the history citation from Florida Statutes to locate the law, e.g.,
  ss. 1, 5, ch. 95-296 would be in the volumes for 1995, chapter 296, sections 1 and 5.
• The Senate or House bill number is identified at the beginning of the text and will be used for continuing the research in the bill citators.

• Status of the bill
• Bill sponsor
• Linked, identical, similar, or compared bills
• Brief description of the bill
• Chronological history
• Citations to pages in the House and Senate Journals
• Dates of action for committees through which the bill passed
• Staff analyses and committee reports

• Statistics
• History of Senate Bills
• History of House Bills
• Introducer/Sponsor Report
• Subject Index
• Statute/Constitution Citations
• Vetoed Bills

NOTE: The Online Sunshine entries for specific bills provide direct links for various versions of the bills, committee amendments, floor amendments, bill analyses, and vote history.

• Select the year and chamber (Senate or House) at the top of the page
• Select the bill number to display:
  • Chronological History
  • Bill Text
  • Amendments
  • Bill Analyses
  • Vote History
  • Citations

Search the Florida Documents Index to identify staff analyses and committee reports which may be available in the UCF Florida Documents Collection, primarily at

• LEG.B2 (House)
• LEG.C2 (Senate)

Not Available at UCF
Available in Orlando on microfiche at the law school libraries of Barry University and FAMU.

provides useful information about the research process and some of the possible problems a researcher might encounter.

"The Archives charges a fee for conducting legislative research for mail and phone researchers. Patrons requiring faster service may visit the Archives in person to examine relevant records, or may hire a private research firm. The Archives maintains a list of private researchers."

"Legislative records for the current and immediately preceding legislative sessions are not maintained at the State Archives. Records are kept by the individual committees for one or more years, and are then sent to the Legislative Library, (850) 488-2812, for processing. The records are subsequently sent to the State Archives, where they are permanently preserved. Some committees, however, may retain their records for as long as three or four years Researchers may still access this material directly from the committee or the Legislative Library."

• 13 Fla.St.U.L. Rev. 485 - "The Search for Intent: Aids to Statutory Construction in Florida - An Update" by Robert M. Rhodes and Susan Seereiter, Florida State University Law Review, vol. 13, pages 485-514, 1985.
• 6 Fla. St. U.L. Rev. 383 - "The Search for Intent: Aids to Statutory Construction in Florida" by Robert M. Rhodes, John W. White and Robert S. Goldman, Florida State University Law Review, vol. 6, pages 383-407, 1978.

by Carol Roehrenbeck, D&S Publishers, 1986
is out-of-print and is not available at UCF.

a PowerPoint presentation

provides useful information about the types of materials available.