Federal Session Laws: The United States Statutes at Large

After each legislative session comes to a close, all the slip laws for that period are collected and bound into a chronologically arranged, cumulative set generically referred to as session laws (because it contains the laws for each session).

Session laws are a chronological arrangement of the laws exactly as they were enacted. There is no attempt to arrange the laws according to their subject matter, or to show the present status of an earlier law that has been amended. (That is the purpose of a code.)

Amendments to a law may appear in different volumes from the law being amended. For example, suppose a federal law passed in 1900 appears in volume 31 of the Statutes at Large. If Congress amended it in 1905, the amendment will appear in the volume for that year. Some laws have been amended numerous times. To obtain the full, current version of a statute using only the session laws, you would have to find the original enactment and each amendment, then cut and paste the changes to the original version.

United States Statutes at Large

The session laws passed by the U.S. Congress are published in a series entitled United States Statutes at Large. This series contains every law passed by Congress since it was first established in 1789.

The Statutes at Large are prepared by the Office of the Federal Register in the National Archives and Records Administration to provide a permanent collection of the laws of each session of Congress.

Each volume in the series contains its own subject index and table of contents. Since 1991 there has also been a popular name index.

From 1956 through 1976, each volume contained a table of earlier laws affected. A cumulative table for 1956–1970 was published, updated by a supplementary pamphlet for 1971–1975. This whole cross-referencing project was eventually abandoned in 1976, but there are extensive marginal notes in the individual statutes referring to laws in earlier volumes as well as to earlier and later matters within the same volume.

From 1963 through 1974, each volume contained a table showing the legislative history of each law in the volume. Beginning in 1975, the legislative histories have appeared at the end of each individual law.

As mentioned earlier, a printed session law in the Statutes at Large looks exactly like the corresponding slip law except that it is part of a bound volume rather than an individual pamphlet. Session laws are just a bound compilation of all the slip laws.

Authority of the Statutes at Large

The United States Statutes at Large, commonly referred to as the Statutes at Large, is the official source for all the laws and resolutions passed by Congress.

Section 112 of the United States Code, a statute originally enacted in 1895, requires the Archivist of the United States to compile and publish the Statutes and Large, and provides that these volumes are admissible as legal evidence in any court in the United States.

Content of the Statutes at Large

Every law, whether public and private, ever enacted by the Congress is published in the Statutes at Large in order of the date of passage. Public and private laws are in separate sections of the volumes.

In addition, the Statutes at Large contains the following:

• concurrent resolutions
• reorganization plans
• the Declaration of Independence
• the Articles of Confederation
• the Constitution
• proposed and ratified amendments to the Constitution
• proclamations by the President

Until 1948, all treaties and international agreements approved by the Senate were also published in the set.

Publication of the Statutes at Large

Publication of the Statutes at Large began in 1845 by the private firm of Little, Brown and Company under authority granted by a joint resolution of Congress. In 1874, the authority to publish was transferred to the U.S. Government Printing Office under the direction of the Secretary of State. In 1950, the Department of State's responsibility for publishing the Statutes at Large was transferred to the General Services Administration and the Office of the Federal Register (OFR). Upon the establishment of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 1985, the Archivist of the United States was given the authority to publish the Statutes at Large, acting through the OFR and the Congressional Printing Management Division of GPO.

Electronic Format

The first eighteen volumes of the Statutes at Large, covering the laws passed by the earlier Congresses (1789–1875) are available online via the Library of Congress American Memory Project.

Members of the UNT community can use LexisNexis Congressional to search the Statutes at Large back to 1789, then view the full text with Adobe Reader. Select "Legislative Histories, Bill, and Laws" to access the search form.

Paper Format

The Statutes at Large are available in paper at UNT and at many federal depository libraries and law libraries. The call numbers are:

• S 7.9:1–62 [1st–80th Congress/1789–1948]

• GS 4.111:63–97 [81st–98th Congress, 1st Session/1949–1983]

• AE 2.111:98–   [98th Congress, 2nd Session–current Congress/1984–present]

Note that the call numbers indicate the volume numbers, which are not the same as the Congress numbers (except by an occasional coincidence).

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Citation Format (Bluebook Style)

Bluebook Rule 12.4 tells how to cite session laws.

A session law reference consists of the following elements:

• the official or popular name of the statute (or if not named, “Act of [full date]”)

• its public law number ("Pub. L. No.") or equivalent state designation (for federal statutes enacted before 1957, use the chapter number)

• the source, consisting of a volume or year number followed by the abbreviated name of the publication (“Stat.” for Statutes at Large), followed by the page number where the statute begins

• the year of enactment, in parentheses (omit if the year already appears in the name of the statute)

• parenthetical information indicating the current version as it appears in the codified law (or a cite to the amending act or acts)

Example:

Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-171, 116 Stat. 134.

Example:

Domestic Volunteer Service Act Amendments of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-288, 98 Stat. 189 (1984)(current version at 42 U.S.C. §§ 4950-5085 (1994 & Supp. I 1995)

Don’t cite a statute to the session laws if a a cite to the current code will work. Use session law citations for the following:

• recently enacted statutes that have not yet been codified 
• statutes that have not been codified because they are not of general applicability
• situations where the reference is to the enactment itself or to provisions that have since been repealed or modified
• provisions that are so scattered across the code that a reference to the session laws is more efficient
• cases in which the language in the codified version differs significantly from the session laws