Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-28-2026
Abstract
The Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School is in the process of creating the first-ever comprehensive database of congressional oversight reports for all House and Senate Committees since the 106th Congress (1999–2000). In this article, we place these reports into the broader context of the tools Congress has to conduct oversight in service of its many legislative branch responsibilities under the Constitution. We also explain the development of the database. We conclude the article by discussing how the congressional scholars in this special issue use this database to examine how Congress conducts oversight, and we propose several additional areas for future study.
Publication Citation
Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, Issue 3, Aug. 2026, e70091.
© 2026 The Author(s). Legislative Studies Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Washington University in St. Louis.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Moore, Grace A.; Rapallo, David; and Theriault, Sean M., "Congressional Oversight Reports as Legislative Branch Work Product and Research Resource" (2026). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2718.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2718
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