Research Guides: Federal Administrative Law Research Guide: Executive Documents

Sources for Presidential Documents

Federal Register

Presidential documents submitted by the President to the Office of the Federal Register, such as executive orders and proclamations, determinations, letters, memorandums, and reorganization plans are published in the Federal Register. These documents appear in a separate Presidential Documents section in the Federal Register. Consult online sources for the Federal Register.

Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 3

Executive orders and proclamations published in the Federal Register the previous year, are compiled annually in Title 3 of the CFR. The CFR, including archive collections back to the inception of the CFR are available from various online sources.

Compilations of Presidential Documents

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (1965 - 2009) and the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents (Jan. 20, 2009 - present) publish executive orders and presidential proclamations, along with various other presidential documents. GovInfo and HeinOnline (below) offer the most complete retrospective coverage.

American Presidency Project
This website provides in a single, searchable database: the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Washington - Taft (1789 -1913); the Public Papers of the Presidents: Hoover to Obama (1929 - ); the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents: Carter to G.W. Bush (1977-2009); the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents: Obama (2009-2015). The database archive also contains over 110,000 documents categorized into over 40 different document types (executive orders, proclamations, signing statements, written and oral messages, addresses, memorandums, debate, and more). Presidential election data, media recordings from as early as the Hoover administration, and links to presidential libraries/museums are also available.

United States Presidential Library This link opens in a new window
This HeinOnline library includes such titles as Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Public Papers of the Presidents, CFR Title 3 (Presidents), Daily and Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, and other documents related to U.S. Presidents.

GovInfo - Compilation of Presidential Documents
The Compilation of Presidential Documents collection consists of the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents and the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents which are the official publications of materials released by the White House Press Secretary. The Compilation of Presidential Documents is published by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Coverage is back to 1992.