Unpacking Statutory Law
There are three types of law which prevail at the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States:
- Statutory Law (or session laws)
- Judicial (or Case law)
- Regulations (or Administrative Law)
Statutory law consists of the acts of legislatures.
Statutory law is published in several forms and by different publishers. If federal statutes need to be cited in court, use the official edition published by the Government Printing Office.
Bills and resolutions are the forms in which legislation is proposed.
When a bill is passed into law, it is "enacted." A law is first published as a slip or pamphlet. The law is identified with a PL (Public Law) numbers. The Public Law number consists of the Congress number and a sequential number assigned chronologically.
The law is also identified with a Stat (Statutes at Large) numbers. The Stat number is the number the law will have when it is reprinted in the Statutes at Large.
- Congress.govThe website for U.S. government legislative information. Provides information on how the legislative process works.
- govinfo (GPO)A-Z listings of all documents from the United States Government Publishing Office.
The Code is a subject arrangement (codification) of all the public laws currently in force. It includes all the laws of a general or permanent nature but does not include Private Laws. The subjects are called "Titles" and are approximately the same as the titles in the Code of Federal Regulations (see the next tab for more information). There are also Codes on the state level. Visit the Delaware Research Guide for link to the Delaware Code and Regulations.
- United States Code: ElectronicContaining the general and permanent laws of the United States. 1941 to the present.
- United States CodeThe official website of the United States Code. It is prepared by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives.
- United States Code AnnotatedComprising all laws of a general and permanent nature under arrangement of official code of the laws of the United States, with annotations from federal and state courts.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowUnited States Code Service is the unofficial resource for the Code. You can find it listed in this database. To the left of the search bar, use the check box labeled "Administrative Codes and Regulations."
The United States Statutes at Large is the collection of all laws and resolutions (public and private) enacted during each session of Congress, in chronological order (also called session laws). Pages are identified with both PL (Public Law) and Stat (Statutes at Large) numbers.
- Statutes at Large (govinfo)1951 (Vol. 65, 82nd Congress) to most recent (2011) (Vol.125, 112th Congress, 1st Session). Browse collection. To search, go to govinfo main page. PDF of certified facsimile of the statute.
- Statutes at Large (Law Library of Congress)1789 (1st Congress) to 1950 (81st Congress). PDFs of the original volumes of the statutes.
- Statutes at Large (Stat) (1789-1875)1789-1875 (vols 1-18) available online in the Library of Congress collection A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation (American Memory).
Statutes at Large:
The legal citation for a statutory law can be to the the Public Law / Statute version or to the codified version of the law.
A Public law citation has the abbreviation P.L. (or Pub. L.), the Congress number, and the law number.
A Statutes at Large citation has the abbreviation Stat, the volume number, and the beginning page.
Codes:
The legal citation for a statutory law can be to the the Public Law / Statute version or to the codified version of the law.
