Annotated Federal Codes

An annotated code is an editorially enhanced version of a code. Although these commercial publications are considered unofficial, they’re usually much more useful than the official (unannotated) code. They are easier to use, and they add value to the code by including all sorts of information that make your research easier.

• Problems With the United States Code
• Versions of Annotated Codes
• Advantages of Annotated Codes

Problems With the United States Code

There are two main problems with the official United States Code:

It’s slow.

The entire Code is republished only every six years (1988, 1994, 2000, 2006, etc.). It is updated only once a year with an supplement, and they are notoriously slow in arriving. When it’s time for a revision of the Code, it comes out piecemeal. For example, the first volume of the 2000 edition might arrive and contain only the first few titles. You'd have to use the 1994 edition volumes for all the other titles.

It’s often obscure.

It’s the courts who interpret the statutes and tell us what they mean. If you want to know what what a phrase or clause in a statute means in practical terms, you need to read relevant court opinions. Unfortunately, the United States Code provides only the language of the statutes themselves, with no references to case law or other library sources that might help you understand what the statute actually means.

Versions of Annotated Codes

There are currently two annotated versions of the U.S. Code:

 United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.)

This annotated code is published by West, which is currently part of the Thomson Legal & Regulatory market group, a Canadian conglomerate. It is available at the UNT Libraries in paper format under call number KF62.U5. The U.S.C.A. is also available online to members of the UNT community as part of West’s Campus Research™ service: in the “Law” section of the service, select “United States Code Annotated” under “Statutes and Regulations.”

United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.)

This annotated code is published by LexisNexis, which is the legal publishing division of Reed Elsevier Inc., a Dutch conglomerate. It is available online to members of the UNT community through LexisNexis Academic. Select “Legal” from the top menu bar, then “Federal & State Codes” from the right margin.

Advantages of Annotated Codes

Annotated codes are kept up to date much more consistently than unannotated codes.

The paper versions have a pocket in the back of each volume to include updates, called pocket parts, that show changes, additions, deletions, and other new information that has become available since the main volume was first published.

The online versions have the text updated often within hours after the information has become public.

One of the things attorneys find most useful about annotated codes is that they contain summaries of cases where the courts have interpreted the statutes. Most of the text of an annotated code, in fact, consists of these case summaries. 

The relevant section is called Notes of Decisions in the U.S.C.A. and Interpretive Notes and Decisions in the U.S.C.S. Each note consists of a case citation accompanied by a brief abstract. Sections that contain a large number of notes are preceded by a subject index.

Annotated codes contain additional valuable elements such as the following:

• References to corresponding administrative regulations

• Historical notes regarding the passing and amending of the statutes

• References to secondary sources such as treatises and articles in law reviews

• Better indexes than the U.S. Code