Transcript U.S. Legal Research

Statutes and Codes
 Federal statutes are codified in the
United States Code.
A Code is defined as:
A collection of all the current laws of
general application, organized by
subject
United States Code
 The official code for federal
statutes
 Divided into 50 “titles” or
subjects
 e.g.
8 U.S.C. §471 (2000)
Finding Statutes in a Code
 By Citation:
– 42 U.S.C. §1983
 By Popular Name:
– “Title IX”
 By Topic:
– You may locate statutes by
searching by topic or keywords
Finding statutes not in the
Code
 Passed too recently to be put into
the Code
 Repealed or taken out of the Code
A federal statute starts out
as a bill, introduced in a
session of Congress
Examples:
H.R. 250
S. 2
Slip Law
Definition:
–An individual copy of a law
published shortly after
enactment.
Example of a citation to a
slip law
Pub. L. No. 105-159
–Read as: the 159th public law
passed by the 105th Congress
Session Laws
Definition:
–A collection of all laws passed
during a legislative session
arranged in chronological
order
Session Laws for Federal
Statutes
 Are in the Statutes at Large
e.g. 99 Stat. 93 (1985)
– Read as: the law beginning on
page 93 of the 99th volume of the
Statutes at Large
Public Laws are published in
chronological order and bound into:
 Statutes at Large (official)
 U.S. Code Congressional &
Administrative News (commercial)
Citation:
– “Drug and Household Substance Mailing
Act of 1990,” P.L. 101-493, 104 Stat.
1184