get_senate_sessions() returns a tibble with the beginning (convening) and
ending (adjournment) dates of each legislative session of the Senate.
Details
The data is sourced from the official Senate website, specifically https://www.senate.gov/legislative/DatesofSessionsofCongress.htm.
Senate sessions explained
That webpage provides this explanation of Senate sessions:
Prior to the 74th Congress (1935-1937), the first session of a Congress officially began on March 4 of odd-numbered years and ended at midnight on March 3 of odd-numbered years. Since 1935, in accordance with the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, Congresses have begun and ended at noon on January 3 of odd-numbered years. Each two-year Congress typically includes two legislative sessions, although third or special sessions were common in earlier years.
The session column
The session column is type factor, with the following levels:
levels(get_senate_sessions()$session)
#> [1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "S"
# Note: That's a letter S, not a number 5!The Senate has had just 2 sessions in each Congress since 1941, so if you
are just working with more recent data, you could convert this column to
numeric. However, if you are working with pre-1941 data, you will likely
be dealing with special sessions (denoted "S"), not just numbered
sessions.
Examples
get_senate_sessions()
#> # A tibble: 309 × 4
#> congress session begin_date adjourn_date
#> <int> <fct> <date> <date>
#> 1 119 1 2025-01-03 NA
#> 2 118 2 2024-01-03 2025-01-03
#> 3 118 1 2023-01-03 2024-01-03
#> 4 117 2 2022-01-03 2023-01-03
#> 5 117 1 2021-01-03 2022-01-03
#> 6 116 2 2020-01-03 2021-01-03
#> 7 116 1 2019-01-03 2020-01-03
#> 8 115 2 2018-01-03 2019-01-03
#> 9 115 1 2017-01-03 2018-01-03
#> 10 114 2 2016-01-04 2017-01-03
#> # ℹ 299 more rows