A bipartisan group of eight senators will introduce a bill on Tuesday that would force the government to reveal how it interprets the laws underpinning the massive surveillance programs revealed by the Guardian.

The bill by Senator Jeff Merkley (Democrat, Oregon), which his office said it planned to introduce to the Senate on Tuesday, would force the government to disclose the opinions of a secretive surveillance court that determines the scope of the eavesdropping on Americans' phone records and internet communications.

The bill has the support of senators Mike Lee (Republican, Utah), Patrick Leahy (Democrat, Vermont), Dean Heller (Republican, Nevada), Mark Begich (Democrat, Alaska), Al Franken (Democrat, Minnesota), Jon Tester (Democrat, Montana) and Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon).

Specifically, the bill would compel the first public airing of the so-called Fisa court's understandings of section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the government has cited as the basis for collecting the phone records of millions of Americans; and section 702 of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, which the government has cited as the basis for the NSA internet monitoring program known as Prism.

"I think that Americans deserve to know how our government is interpreting the Patriot Act and the Fisa Amendments Act," Jamal Raad, a spokesman for Merkley, told the Guardian on Tuesday. "After these disclosures, folks will want to know how that works within the plain language of the law, of the Patriot Act. How does one get to gather anything, anytime, anywhere from grabbing 'any tangible thing relevant to an investigation'."

Merkley, a civil libertarian, has fought these battles before. At the end of 2012, Merkley jumped into the legislative fight over reauthorising a crucial surveillance law, known as the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, to compel the government to declassify some of the Fisa court's orders. The Senate ultimately rejected Merkley's amendment by a 54-37 vote.

Raad said the new bill would closely resemble Merkley's 2012 amendment. The bill focuses on the Fisa court opinions, not the secret executive-branch interpretations themselves, he said, because "the Fisa court is where those decisions are made on what's allowed under the law."

Merkley's bill comes as members of Congress have expressed surprise at the scope of the NSA surveillance but before any legislative response or strategy has coalesced. James Sensenbrenner (Republican, Wisconsin), the author of the 2001 Patriot Act, wrote for the Guardian that the Obama administration's interpretation of the law justifying the surveillance has surpassed what the bill's language authorises. Senator Mark Udall (Democrat-Colorado) has called on his colleagues and the Obama administration to open debate on the Patriot Act after the Guardian's disclosures.

Wyden has long warned that the government possessed classified interpretations of surveillance laws that differ in material ways from the language of the law. His efforts at declassifying them, joined by Udall and Merkley over the past two years, have not succeeded.

In February, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein (Democrat-California), and four other senators, including Merkley, wrote to the Fisa court asking to "declassify opinions of this court that are assessed to contain a significant interpretation of the law". They continued: "We believe that decisions of this court contain important rulings of the law that, if declassified, would inform public debate over Fisa [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] that are subject to sunset in 2015 and 2017."

Judge Reggie Walton, the presiding judge of the court, responded on 27 March that he would try to work with the senators on declassifying the rulings. "Realistically, however, I would not anticipate many such cases given the fact-intensive nature of Fisc opinions," Walton wrote.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government to compel release of its classified interpretation of section 215, the so-called "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.

The Obama administration has said all its surveillance efforts are subject to rigorous Fisa court review and members of Congress are sufficiently briefed on them, even though most legislators did not receive such briefings.

"Americans have a right to know" how the government is defining its surveillance powers, Raad said.