From slip law to United States code: a guide to federal statutes for congressional offices.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Deal, Laura, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Session laws--United States.

Session laws.

Legislation--United States.

Legislation.

Legal research--United States.

Legal research.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2023.

Summary:

This report provides an overview of federal statutes in their various forms, as well as basic guidance for Members and congressional staff interested in researching statutes. When a bill becomes a law, the newly enacted statute may amend or repeal earlier statutes, or it may create a new or "freestanding" law. Either way, these new statutes are first printed individually as "slip laws" and numbered by order of passage as either public laws or, less frequently, private laws. Slip laws are later aggregated and published chronologically in volumes known as the United States Statutes at Large (Statutes at Large). Statutes of a general and permanent nature are incorporated into the United States Code (U.S. Code), which arranges the statutes by subject matter into 54 titles and five appendices. As these statutes are revised, superseded, or repealed, the provisions of the U.S. Code are updated to reflect these changes. The authoritative language of a statute is the statute itself. A statute maybe enacted as a title of the U.S. Code, in which case this statute is a "positive law" title of the US. Code and therefore the title itself is legal evidence of the law (the authoritative language). Statutes not enacted as a title of, or an amendment to, a title of the US. Code are classified to the U.S. Code as a non-positive provision of the U.S. Code and are prima facie evidence of FederalLaw, which is rebuttable by showing a difference to the underlying statute.A notable difference between the U.S. Code and the Statutes at Large is that the laws codified or classified in the U.S. Code exist "as amended," which reflects changes made by later laws. Consequently, the US. Code is more convenient to search than the Statutes at Large. Moreover,the Office of the Law Revision Counsel publishes tools known as "Tables," to assist researchers in locating statutes, as well as identifying statutes that may have been amended, omitted, transferred, or repealed. Nevertheless, certain laws are not added to the U.S. Code, such as lawsappropriating funds, and thus researchers will often need to search laws in the other forms discussed herein.

Contents:

Noncommercial sources of slip laws Government Publishing Office Library of Congress Commercial sources of slip laws Lexis ProQuest Congressional Westlaw The United States Statutes at Large Noncommercial sources of the Statutes at Large Government Publishing Office Library of Congress Commercial sources of the Statutes at Large HeinOnline Lexis ProQuest Congressional Westlaw United States Code and the Revised Statutes of the United States Amended laws Positive versus non-positive law titles of the U.S. Code Editorial reclassification Annotated editions of the U.S. Code Searching the U.S. Code General index Popular names table Classification tables Further information Contacts Author Information.

Notes:

Updated June 12, 2023

Includes bibliographical references (pages) and index.