Bills that are passed by Congress and signed by the President can be found through several different methods, each with its own numbering system you can use to identify a specific law.
When a bill is introduced by a sponsor, the clerk of the House or Senate assigns it a bill number (also known as a "legislative number"). This number includes two parts: the first indicates the Congress in which the bill was introduced, and the second is the bill's chronological order within that session. House bills are labeled with "H.R.," while Senate bills use "S." For example, the designation "104 H.R. 3103" means this was the 3,103rd bill introduced in the House during the 104th Congress.
Once a bill is signed by the President, it officially becomes law and is assigned a “Public Law Number.” This number reflects the order in which the law was passed within that congressional session. For example, HIPAA (104 H.R. 3103), mentioned above, was the 191st law enacted during the 104th Congress, so its public law number is P.L. 104-191.
Once a public law number is assigned, the Government Printing Office publishes the law as a “slip law”—a pamphlet printed on individual sheets. Each slip law is labeled with its assigned Public Law number. As more laws are passed throughout a congressional session, these pamphlets accumulate, each one representing a distinct law.
At the end of a congressional session, all slip laws from that session are compiled into bound volumes known as the United States Statutes at Large. Since these volumes are published by session, they are also called session laws. However, the Statutes at Large volume numbers do not align with specific congressional sessions or years. For example, Volume 110 of the Statutes at Large contains laws passed during the second session of the 104th Congress in 1996.
Within the Statutes at Large, session laws are printed in the order they were passed, and their citations include the volume and the starting page number. These citations, however, do not correspond directly to the year or congressional session. For example, HIPAA's Statutes at Large citation is 110 Stat. 1936, indicating it is found in Volume 110, starting on page 1936.
At this stage, we have three ways to reference the same law:
To understand codification, it’s helpful to know that the U.S. Code is organized by subject into 54 titles. For example, laws relating to Public Health and Welfare are codified in Title 42. The Office of Law Revision Counsel is responsible for preparing, updating, and publishing the U.S. Code to ensure it remains current.
When a public law is enacted, it often specifies changes to the U.S. Code. For instance, a law may direct that a new paragraph be added to 42 U.S.C. § 1309. The Office of Law Revision Counsel then updates the Code to reflect this change, a process known as "codification."
Sometimes, a public law doesn’t reference a specific section of the Code. In such cases, the Office of Law Revision Counsel determines the best place to integrate the law within the Code’s subject arrangement.
Since a single statute can address multiple topics, sections of a statute may be codified in different titles or sections of the U.S. Code. For example, HIPAA (P.L. 104-191) includes sections codified at multiple points within Title 42, such as 42 U.S.C. § 300gg and 42 U.S.C. § 1320d.
At this stage, we have four ways to locate the same law:
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