The Detailed Legislative History table, available for every act and regulation on e-Laws, is a valuable source of information, particularly when you need to know how an act, or a section of an act, read at a particular point in time. However, it is important to understand what information is, and is not included in the "amendments by provision" segment of the table.

In essence, if a section of an act was re-enacted (or "substituted" in the case of regulations) prior to Jan. 1/2004, any previous history of this section will have been deleted.

If the section was re-enacted or substituted after Jan. 1/2004, the previous history will be shown. However, the above statement is still true, so if a section was re-enacted or substituted multiple times prior to Jan. 1/2004, only the last re-enactment or substitution will be shown.

All amendments, regardless of their date, will be shown, provided that a) the section was never re-enacted or substituted or b) the section was only re-enacted after Jan. 1/2004.

The upshot of all of this is that if you are using the "amendments by provision" part of the table to determine what a section of legislation looked like at a certain point in time, *any* re-enactment or substitution before Jan. 1/2004, but after the point in time that you are interested in, means that the by provision history should not be used.

In order to determine the language of the legislation at the point in time of interest, you must use the list of "amendments to this act or regulation", that appears above the "amendments by provision". And check each and every intervening amending act or regulation between the base act or regulation and the date that you are interested in.