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The United States Code (U.S.C.) is the general and permanent federal Law of the United States.
Once a Public Law is enacted, its operative provisions are usually incorporated into the U.S. Code. There are a few exceptions (in which case one must consult the Public Law directly), but they are rare.
Organization
The Code is divided into titles, which deal with broad subjects; chapters; and sections, which in turn may be divided into subsections. The word "title" in this context is roughly akin to "volume," although many of the larger titles and a few sections span multiple volumes.
A sample citation would be 5 U.S.C. § 552a, the Privacy Act of 1974. A lawyer would read that out loud as "Title five, United States Code, section five hundred and fifty-two A."
Versions
The official version of the Code is maintained by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives.
However, practicing lawyers always use an annotated version from a private company. The two leading annotated versions are the United States Code Annotated, abbreviated as U.S.C.A., and the United States Code Service, abbreviated as U.S.C.S. The U.S.C.A. is published by Westlaw (part of Thomson), and the U.S.C.S. is published by LexisNexis (part of Reed Elsevier). See Wexis.
An annotated version contains annotations following each statute which summarize relevant court decisions, law review articles, and uncodified provisions that are part of the Public Laws. When an attorney is viewing an annotated code on an online service, all the citations in the annotations are hyperlinked to the referenced opinions and documents.
Other Relevant Codifications
Sometimes Congress is either too congested or too lazy to write out all the details of how a new law shall be implemented. So it often grants broad powers to the executive branch to promulgate administrative regulations through a special rulemaking process set out in the Administrative Procedure Act.
The regulations are initially published in the Federal Register and compiled into the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.). Once integrated into the C.F.R., they carry the force of law.
Amendments and Repeals
Amendments are usually indicated through the annual publication of "pocket part" pamphlets that are inserted into the back of volumes of annotated versions of the U.S.C., and an annotation will show the history of amendments to any given section. When a pamphlet gets too thick, a new volume is sent out.
When sections are repealed, their text is deleted and replaced by a note summarizing what used to be there. This is necessary so that lawyers reading old cases can understand what the cases are talking about.
However, this can be problematic because some laws, like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, have been completely repealed, but their remnants remain in the Code as empty chapters full of historical notes. In Title 8, Chapter 7 is labeled "Exclusion of Chinese." Of the fifteen chapters in Title 8, Chapter 7 is the only chapter whose heading refers to a specific nationality or ethnic group.
Parts of Interest
Title 26 of the U.S. Code is also known as the Internal Revenue Code. It defines the Internal Revenue Service and is one of the largest portions of the Code, along with Title 42, which includes provisions governing several large federal government programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Some of the different types of bankruptcy defined in Title 11 (the Bankruptcy Code), are commonly referred to simply by their chapter numbers: Chapter 7, Chapter 11, Chapter 13.
A handful of U.S.C. sections are so often cited that every American lawyer has heard of them.
By far, the most famous section in the Code is 42 U.S.C. § 1983. It is the basis for virtually all federal civil rights actions. Many different types of lawsuits are brought in federal court under that section; they include everything from excessive force lawsuits against police to First Amendment lawsuits against public schools to maintain church/state separation. The section itself is quite short, but in an annotated version of the U.S.C., its annotations span several volumes.
Titles Of The U.S.C.
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