The United States Code 1926
The United States Code 1926
The United States Code is a multi-volume compilation and codification of the United States’ general and permanent laws. According to subject matter, the volumes are divided into fifty titles. Regulations published by federal agencies, decisions of federal courts, laws adopted by state or municipal governments, and treaties are not included in the Code.
Prior to 1926, researching federal statutory law was extremely difficult. The Revised Statutes of the United States (1875), which contained inaccuracies, contained all federal statutes enacted before 1875. After 1875, laws were published in chronological sequence, without subject matter organization or a cumulative index, in volumes of the United States Statutes at Large. The publishing of the Code was approved by Congress in 1926, bringing together all legal federal laws in one volume organized by topic matter.
The Code, however, was never submitted to Congress in its entirety for enactment into formal law after its publication. As a result, the wording of a statute found in the Code was only deemed prima facie evidence of the law. The United States Statutes at Large remained the authorized source for the text of federal legislation.
To address this anomaly, Congress established the Office of the Law Revision Counsel, which is responsible for rewriting the Code and proposing individual titles to Congress for adoption into positive law. Less than half of the titles had been updated and enacted into law by the turn of the twenty-first century. The wording of titles that have been adopted into positive law is legal proof of the law contained in those titles; other Code titles are just prima facie evidence.
Each title of the Code is broken down into chapters, which are then broken down into parts. The title and section numbers of the Code, as well as the year of publication, are indicated in citations, such as 42 U.S.C. 1983. (1996). Every six years, a new edition of the Code is released, with cumulative supplements released in between.
SEE ALSO:
The Government Printing Office (1861);
Law Reporting and Legal Publishing (1872);
The Federal Register (1936).
SOURCES: