Reliance on legislative history makes law inaccessible to ordinary lawyers and citizens.

Evidence

Here is a controversy which affects every little merchant in many States. Aside from a few offices in the larger cities, the materials of legislative history are not available to the lawyer who can afford neither the cost of acquisition, the cost of housing, or the cost of repeatedly examining the whole congressional history. Moreover, if he could, he would not know any way of anticipating what would impress enough members of the Court to be controlling. To accept legislative debates to modify statutory provisions is to make the law inaccessible to a large part of the country. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1796

Categorization

• XREF: Links to access-to-justice and legal-pluralism threads across the polyad courses. — connects to: American courts never formally barred legislative history, only weighed it case by case. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1971; Ambiguous legislative history does not justify abandoning its use — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 519

Broader Connections

• Ambiguous legislative history does not justify abandoning its use #responds-to (0.90) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 519