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Finding the public laws in the United States Statutes at Large might be the end of the research trail for those interested in how a law has changed over time. However, many researchers are also interested in the legislative history documents (such as congressional committee hearings and reports, congressional debates, etc.) attached to the bills and resolutions that eventually became these public laws. To find the pertinent bill numbers for public laws from 1904 to the present,[2] simply look to the first page of the public law as it is printed in the United States Statutes at Large. To the immediate left or right (depending on whether the public law starts on an even or odd page) of the first section of the public law, there will be information about both the bill number and date of enactment.
Welcome to the House Office of the Legislative Counsel Guide to Legislative Drafting. The purpose of this online guide is to provide an overview of the drafting style and conventions used by the House Office of the Legislative Counsel in order to facilitate communication and collaboration between the attorneys of the Office and their clients.
Please feel free to browse the table of contents below to navigate to the relevant topics within the guide. Be sure to check back frequently, as we have many plans to continually update our guide to take increasing advantage of its online presence.
There are four different forms of legislation. Two of them (bills and joint resolutions) are used for making law, while the other two (simple resolutions and concurrent resolutions) are used for matters of congressional administration and to express nonbinding policy views. Joint resolutions are also used to propose constitutional amendments for ratification by the States.
For a bill or joint resolution to become law, section 7 of article I of the Constitution requires that it pass both houses of Congress and be presented to the President. It will become law if the President signs it, if the President vetoes it and Congress overrides the veto by a two-thirds vote, or if ten days pass without any action by the President (while Congress is in session). Simple resolutions and concurrent resolutions are not presented to the President because they do not become law. Joint resolutions proposing constitutional amendments are governed instead under article V of the Constitution, which does not require presentment to the President.
There is no legal difference between a law that originated as a bill and a law that originated as a joint resolution. Congress chooses between bills and joint resolutions using conventions that have developed over time for the subject matter involved. Bills are more common than joint resolutions, but a prominent example of a joint resolution is a resolution to make continuing appropriations beyond the end of a fiscal year when the regular appropriations bills for the next year have not been completed (a "continuing resolution" or "CR").
One other difference between bills and joint resolutions is stylistic. When a bill passes one house of Congress, its designation changes from "A Bill" to "An Act", even though it has not yet become law. A "Joint Resolution" keeps the same designation even after passage by both houses and enactment.
Each new statute is printed as a separate document called a slip law. At the end of each session of Congress, the slip laws from that session are compiled, in sequential order, into the Statutes at Large. The top of each page of a slip law has a "Stat." page number, which is the number that page will have in the Statutes at Large. Neither the slip laws nor the Statutes at Large are updated to reflect amendment by later statute.
The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives organizes most provisions of the public laws by subject matter in the United States Code so that particular provisions can be easily located. If a provision is of general applicability and is permanent, it will probably be assigned to a section in the Code; a provision that is temporary, narrow in scope, or obsolete or executed may be assigned to a note or appendix, or left out of the Code entirely. To search or browse the Code, you may visit the Office of the Law Revision Counsel's Search & Browse page.
It is helpful to keep in mind several other points when using the U.S. Code. First, the Code has a different structure than the slip laws and is not a verbatim replication of them. Section numbers and cross-references will usually differ. There could even be some differences in language, although no substantive changes are intended. Second, the process of classifying a slip law to the Code often involves splitting it up and placing different provisions of it in different parts of the Code. Finally, unlike the slip laws and Statutes at Large, the Code is updated to reflect amendment by later statute.
The easiest way to understand this distinction is to look at the purpose and history of the U.S. Code. The only organizing principle behind the slip laws, and thus the Statutes at Large, is chronology. This makes it very difficult to find the law on a particular topic using those sources. Beginning in 1926, the U.S. Code was published to organize the laws by subject matter and make them more accessible. The first editions of the Code were simply restatements of the laws being organized; they did not actually take the place of those laws. If there was a conflict between a Code provision and the underlying statutory provision, the statute controlled.
In 1947, Congress began the process of enacting titles of the Code into law and repealing the underlying statutes, a process that continues today. The provisions of a title so enacted become "positive" law, and the underlying statutory provisions can no longer be used to rebut them. One can quickly see the status of a title by looking at the first page after the title page of any volume of the Code or at the Search & Browse page on the Office of the Law Revision Counsel's website. Those titles marked with an asterisk have been enacted into positive law.
As discussed above, when legislation cites a statutory provision that is not part of a positive law title of the U.S. Code, the citation must be to the underlying statute, not to the Code. This presents a logistical problem, because the original slip law and the Statutes at Large are not updated to reflect any amendments since enactment. For this reason, access to a compilation of the statute that includes the amendments is an enormous drafting aid.
The House Office of the Legislative Counsel maintains a corpus of Statute Compilations of public laws that either do not appear in the U.S. Code or have been classified to a title of the U.S. Code that has not been enacted into positive law. Select Statute Compilations are available on the GovInfo website of the Government Publishing Office.
With rare exceptions, it is unnecessary to specify that you are citing to a statute "as amended". Upon enactment, amendments are considered executed, even though nothing physically happens to the slip law or Statutes at Large, and any future reference is considered to be to the statute as amended.
The section is the basic unit of organization of a bill, and thus of an enacted statute. Section 104 of title 1, United States Code, provides that a section "shall contain, as nearly as may be, a single proposition of enactment". The terminology for referring to units within a section has become highly standardized and should be carefully followed to avoid confusion. The breakdown of a section is as follows:
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