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When accessing the Government Printing Office Site, you will find Bills. Be careful: bills are proposed laws that have not
been passed and may never be passed. In the policy class, they may provide helpful ideas to you as you think about ways in
which laws can or should be amended.
Bills proposed beginning in 1993 are found through the link below:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong009.html
Helpful hints for searching bills can be found at:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/help/hints/bills.html
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH: PUBLIC LAWS AND STATUTES AT LARGE
The public laws are the specific individual laws that Congress has passed recently. They are arranged by date of passage
into the Statutes at Large. Every six years, Public Laws are codified and inserted into the US Code (see below). Each Public
Law has a PL number.
The Public Laws database is a collection of laws enacted during the 107th Congress (2001-2002), 106th Congress (1999-2000),
105th Congress (1997-1998) and 104th Congress (1995-1996) and are prepared and published by the Office of the Federal Register
(OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Laws older than 1995 are not in the database. These Public Laws
can be searched in each of these separate two-year databases, and are found through a link at:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/nara005.html
Once a law is signed by the President, it is assigned a public law number and issued in print as a "slip law." At
the end of each two-year session of Congress, the slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called the Statutes at Large,
and they are known as "session laws."
The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted.
Because the text of laws published as public laws and Statutes at Large are the same, there is not a Statutes at Large database
on GPO Access. However, users may perform a search by Statutes at Large citation in both the public laws and U.S. Code databases.
You can find help in searching the public laws at:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/help/hints/plaws.html
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH: THE US CODE
Every six years, public laws are incorporated into the United States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent
laws of the United States. The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present is maintained as a separate
database on GPO Access.
Laws in the US Code are arranged by subject under 50 separate subject related "Titles". The US Code is the
Law of the Land, and it can be found through a link at:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong013.html
This document is the codification of the general and permanent laws of the United States, and is updated in print format every
six years. The U.S. Code database is broken down by title and section, enabling the user to search by Title and Section numbers
if a citation is available.
The GPO Access database contains the text from the most recent print revision of the U.S. Code in 1994, which codifies
the laws that were in effect as of January 4, 1995.
The Government Printing Office provides helpful hints to access the US Code on this site:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/help/hints/uscode.html
The above link will take you to a listing of the major titles under which all of the laws are organized. Within a title,
you will find a number of subdivisions called Chapters, Subchapters, Sections, etc. Think of these subdivisions as you would
the parts of an outline:
I. Title
A. Chapter
1. Subchapter
a. Section
These subdivisions are used to create a branching structure within which new laws can be inserted as they are passed by
Congress. Viewed in this context, the language of legislation should become much less intimidating.
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