Political Science: Primary Sources

Research guide for political science at Cascadia College

What is a primary source? Learn more here.

Local Politics

Washington State Courts
Website for the state judiciary, providing information on courts, judicial opinions, and programs.
Seattle Open Data Portal
Openly available data collected by services throughout the Seattle Metro Area.

U.S. Senate
Official records of the US Senate and their daily activities.
U.S. House of Representatives
Official records of the US House of Representatives and their daily activities
ProQuest Congressional
Includes full text of bills back to 1789, hearings 1824-1979, laws starting in 1988, and more. Some secondary sources present.
U.S. Supreme Court
Highest Federal court. Includes judicial opinions and argument transcripts.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
The Federal court which presides over Washington State (and other western states)
C-SPAN
Search millions of hours of video library. In addition to House and Senate Proceedings, programming on issues in policy, journalism, history, books, and more.

United Nation iLibrary
A single digital destination for seamlessly accessing publications, journals, data, and series published by the United Nations Secretariat, and its funds and programs.
Europa - Gateway to the European Union
Provides up-to-date coverage of EU affairs and essential information on European integration. It is also possible to consult all legislation currently in force or under discussion, access the websites of each of the EU institutions and find out about the policies administered by the European Union under the powers devolved to it by the Treaties.
idealist.org
Non-Governmental International Activist Organizations homepages can be found here.

State Party Platform Project
Personal project of a university Political Science professor, providing platform data for political parties by state across the country.
Political Parties of the World
Information about currently active parties and concise overviews of national parliamentary and constitutional arrangements.
NOT A PRIMARY SOURCE, but contains directory information for each party covered.
Manifesto Project
Dataset for the analysis of policy preferences; covers over 1000 parties from 1945 - present in over 50 countries.

Congressional Record (GPO)
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published daily when Congress is in session.
Founders Archive Online (NARA)
"Correspondence and other writing of six major shapers of the United States"
American Memory Project
The Avalon Project (Yale Law School)
Collected documents from the Presidents of the United States
Society for History in the Federal Government
Non-profit organization that collects and preserves Federal history.
American Presidency Project
Statistics, speeches, and media about and by Presidents of the United States

Check out the following guides, all from UW Seattle, to find an additional wealth of databases and archives: