How to Find Federal Statutes
Brian Huddleston, Senior Reference Librarian and Associate Professor
Loyola University New Orleans School of Law Library
The laws passed by Congress, such as the Endangered Species Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act, are contained in a set of books called the United States Code (often abbreviated “U.S.C.”, “USC”, or “U.S. Code”). The U.S. Code is organized into fifty titles and each title deals with a broad subject, like Banks and Banking (Title 12) or Public Health and Welfare (Title 42). Particular laws, and parts of laws, are cited by their U.S. Code title and section. For example:
42 U.S.C. §1983
indicates the federal statute found in Title 42 of the USC at Section 1983.
The official version of the U.S. Code is published by the Federal Government. Two publishing companies publish commercial versions of the U.S. Code: the United States Code Annotated (“USCA”) and the United States Code Series (“USCS”). These books are found in the following locations on the 2nd Floor of the law library:
USC KF62.U55 Reference Collection, Range 202B
USCS KF62.5.U52 Stacks
USCA KF62.5 U5 Reference Collection, Range 202B - 203A (Copy 1)
Stacks (Copy 2)
(Note that the library has two copies of the USCA.)
The two commercial codes, the USCA and the USCS, have more finding tools and cross-references to other materials. They are also updated more frequently than the government-published USC. But the Title and Section citations are the same for all three sets and the texts of the statutes vary only by how recently each set has been updated.
If you don’t have a citation to the statute that you need, each of these sets has an index. You can use the index to look up words that describe the subject you are researching and locate relevant Titles and Sections of the U.S. Code that deal with that subject.
As an example of using the indexes to the codes, here is an entry from the General Index to the USCA:
Handicapped Persons
. . .
Housing
Pet ownership in assisted rental
housing for the elderly or handicapped, 12 §1701r-1
. . .
The listing of specific subjects related to Handicapped Persons includes Housing and a sub-listing for “Pet ownership in assisted rental housing for the elderly or handicapped”. This narrow subject is addressed in Title 12 of the U.S. Code at Section 1701r-1.
In addition to the general index, each set has a “Popular Name Table”. Some federal laws, as in the examples earlier, have names such as the “Endangered Species Act”. Laws like that can be found in the Popular Name tables of the three versions of the U.S. Code. But not all federal laws have a Popular Name, and some of the common names used to refer to federal laws are not “official” Popular Names. So if you don’t find a law in the Popular Name Index, try looking it up in the general index with a keyword describing the subject of the law.
For example, in the Popular Name Table:
Noise Pollution and Abatement Act of 1970
Pub.L. 91-604 § 14, Dec. 31, 1970, 84 Stat. 1709 (42 §§ 1858, 1858a)
This law, the “Noise Pollution and Abatement Act of 1970", was passed by as Pub.L. (“Public Law”) 91-604 (specifically in §14 of that Public Law), on December 31, 1970. This statute can be found in the U.S. Code in Title 42 at Sections 1858 and 1858a.
A Public Law is a statute in the form as it was passed by Congress (i.e., not as it is organized by subject in the U.S. Code). Public Laws are published in a set of books called “Statutes at Large”, a citation to which is found in the Popular Name Table entry above, 84 Stat. 1709, incicating that this public law can be found in Volume 84, Page 1709 of the Statutes at Large. Here is the location information for this set:
Statutes at Large
KF50.U5 (Stacks)
Statutes at Large can be useful because many laws passed by Congress make numerous changes throughout the U.S. Code. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), passed in 1990, was about fifty pages long and made changes to a couple of dozen sections of the Code (and also added several new sections). To read the law in its entirety, Statutes at Large will give you the entire text of this law as it was originally passed by Congress.
When using any version of the U.S. Code - or reading a Public Law in Statutes at Large - it is important to make sure to locate any possible amendments or changes to the statutes you find. Most volumes of the USCA and USCS have a pocket part in the back cover - or a pamphlet next to the volume - that contain recent changes to the laws in that volume. There are also supplements to the entire sets of both the USCA and USCS that contain new laws passed by Congress since the pocket parts were published. The USC is updated with annual hard-bound volumes which supplement that entire set.
For more information about researching Federal Statutes, consult a Legal Research handbook or treatise such as:
Fundamentals of Legal Research, 7th Ed
(See Chapter 9, “Federal Legislation)
KF 240.J32 (Stacks)
For any further help on this or any other legal research subject, please feel free
to ask one of the reference librarians at the Reference Desk on the second floor.
A copy of this handout is available through the library catalog at
under the link for "Pathfinders".