Guide to Legislative Process in the House

XIX. PUBLICATION

One of the important steps in the enactment of a valid law is the requirement that it shall be made known to the people who are to be bound by it. Obviously, there would be no justice if the state were to hold its people responsible for their conduct before it made known to them the unlawfulness of such behavior. That idea is implicit in the Constitutional prohibition against enacting ex post facto laws. In practice, our laws are published immediately upon their enactment so that they may be known to the people.

If the President approves a bill, or allows it to become law without signing it, the original enrolled bill is sent from the White House to the Archivist of the United States for publication. If a bill is passed by both Houses over the objections of the President the body that last overrides the veto likewise transmits it. There it is assigned a public law number, and paginated for the Statutes at Large volume covering that session of Congress. The public and private law numbers run in sequence starting anew at the beginning of each Congress, and since 1957 are prefixed for ready identification by the number of the Congress--that is, the first public law of the 105th Congress is designated Public Law 105-1 and the first private law of the 105th Congress is designated Private Law 105-1. Subsequent laws of this Congress also will contain the same prefix designator.

Slip Laws | Statutes at Large | U.S. Code

SLIP LAWS

The first official publication of the statute is in the form generally known as the "slip law." In this form, each law is published separately as an unbound pamphlet. The heading indicates the public or private law number, the date of approval, and the bill number. The heading of a slip law for a public law also indicates the United States Statutes at Large citation. If the statute has been passed over the veto of the President, or has become law without the President's signature because he did not return it with objections, an appropriate statement is inserted in lieu of the usual notation of approval.

The Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, which prepares the slip laws, provides marginal editorial notes giving the citations to laws mentioned in the text and other explanatory details. The marginal notes also give the United States Code classifications, thus enabling the reader immediately to determine where the statute will appear in the Code. Each slip law also includes an informative guide to the legislative history of the law consisting of the committee report number, the name of the committee in each House, as well as the date of consideration and passage in each House, with a reference to the Congressional Record by volume, year, and date. A reference to Presidential statements--relating to the approval of a bill (or the veto of a bill when the veto was overridden and the bill becomes law)--is included in the legislative history in the form of a citation to the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.

Copies of the slip laws are delivered to the document rooms of both Houses where they become available to officials and the public. They may also be obtained by annual subscription or individual purchase from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office and are available in electronic form for computer access.

Section 113 of title 1 of the United States Code provides that slip laws are competent evidence in all the courts, tribunals and public offices of the United States, and of the several States.

STATUTES AT LARGE

For the purpose of providing a permanent collection of the laws of each session of Congress, the bound volumes (which are called the United States Statutes at Large) are prepared by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration. When the latest volume containing the laws of the first session of the 104th Congress becomes available it will be No. 109 in the series. Each volume contains a complete index and a table of contents. From 1956 through 1976, each volume contained a table of earlier laws affected. These tables were cumulated for 1956-1970 and supplemented for 1971-1975 in pamphlet form, and discontinued in 1976. From 1963 through 1974, each volume also contained a most useful table showing the legislative history of each law in the volume. This latter table was not included in subsequent volumes because, beginning in 1975, the legislative histories have appeared at the end of each law. There are also extensive marginal notes referring to laws in earlier volumes and to earlier and later matters in the same volume.

Under the provisions of a statute originally enacted in 1895, these volumes are legal evidence of the laws contained in them and will be accepted as proof of those laws in any court in the United States.

The Statutes at Large are a chronological arrangement of the laws exactly as they have been enacted. There is no attempt to arrange the laws according to their subject matter or to show the present status of an earlier law that has been amended on one or more occasions. That is the function of a code of laws.

UNITED STATES CODE (USC)

The United States Code contains a consolidation and codification of the general and permanent laws of the United States arranged according to subject matter under 50 title headings, in alphabetical order to a large degree. It sets out the current status of the laws, as amended, without repeating all the language of the amendatory acts except where necessary for that purpose and is declared to be prima facie evidence of those laws. Its purpose is to present the laws in a concise and usable form without requiring recourse to the many volumes of the Statutes at Large containing the individual amendments.

The Code is prepared by the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives. New editions are published every six years and cumulative supplements are published after the conclusion of each regular session of the Congress. The Code is also available in electronic form for computer access.

Twenty-two of the 50 titles have been revised and enacted into positive law, and two have been eliminated by consolidation with other titles. Titles that have been revised and enacted into positive law are legal evidence of the law and the courts will receive them as proof of those laws. Eventually all the titles will be revised and enacted into positive law, and thereafter they will be kept up to date by direct amendment.