Federal Slip Laws

As soon as Congress has enacted a bill into law (with or without the President’s cooperation), copies of the new law are sent to the National Archives and Records Administration’s Office of the Federal Register (OFR) to be prepared for official publication. The bills that the President has signed are sent to the OFR by the White House. If a bill is passed by Congress overriding the President’s veto, then whichever chamber votes on the bill last transmits it.

A few weeks later, the law is published in slip law format: that is, as an individual, unbound pamphlet. This is the first official printing of the new statute and is issued by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). Copies of the slip laws are delivered to the document rooms of both chambers of Congress, where they become available to officials and the public. Later, after enough laws have accumulated, they will be compiled and published together in a set of permanent bound volumes called the United States Statutes at Large.

The OFR assigns each new law a permanent public law number (or private law number) and a legal citation indicating the volume and page number that the law will have in the Statutes at Large. Since 1975, the published slip law has been given exactly the same format and pagination that the law will have when it is compiled into the Statutes At Large. Public and private laws are numbered sequentially, with the sequence starting over at the beginning of each Congress, and since 1957 these numbers have been prefixed by the number of the Congress. The first public law of the 108th Congress, for example, would by designated Public Law 108-1; and the first private law of the 105th Congress would be designated Private Law 105-1. Before 1957, each law enacted was given a sequential chapter number without regard to whether it was a public or private law or to which Congress passed it. For example, Chapter 231 might be the 231st law enacted by the 81st Congress, or it might be the 231st law enacted by the 82nd Congress.

The length of individual statutes varies considerably. A slip law can be as short as a single sheet of paper (some don’t even fill an entire page), or it might be as lengthy as War and Peace.

Anatomy of a Slip Law

A slip law contains the following elements:

Heading

(Appears at the top of the first page of a slip law)

• A citation to the Statutes at Large
• The public (or private) law number
• The date the law was approved (or allowed to pass, or passed by Congress over the President’s veto)

Marginal Notes

(Appears at the side of the page)

• The date the law was passed

• The original bill number

• Citations to laws mentioned in the text

• Other explanatory details

• United States Code classifications (which allows the reader to determine exactly where the statute will appear in the codified version of the law) The U.S. Code classifications are assigned by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives, usually during the enrollment process.

Legislative History

• The bill number

• The committee report number

• The name of the pertinent committee in each chamber of Congress

• The date of consideration and passage in each chamber of Congress, with a citation to the Congressional Record.

• The date of the President’s approval or veto statement, with a citation to the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.

List of Public Laws

Some time later, a List of Public Laws is created, posted online, and then published in the Federal Register. Entries in the list are arranged numerically by Public Law number. The current list is updated as soon as each new public law becomes available.

Each entry in the List of Public Laws includes:

• Bill number

• Public Law number

• Name of statute

• Date statute was approved

• Citation to where statute appears in U.S. Statutes at Large

• Number of pages in statute

(Note that the full text of public laws does not appear in the Federal Register.)

Sample entry:

H.R. 825/Public Law 108-46 

To redesignate the facility of the United States Postal Service

located at 7401 West 100th Place in Bridgeview, Illinois, as the

``Michael J. Healy Post Office Building''. 

(July 14, 2003; 117 Stat. 847; 1 page)

Authority of Slip Laws

Section 113 of Title 1 of the United States Code provides that slip laws are admissible as “competent evidence” in all the federal and state courts, tribunals and public offices of the United States.

Publication of Slip Laws

The Office of the Federal Register publishes the slip laws through the Congressional Printing Management Division of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO).

Electronic Format

THOMAS: Search Full Text of Bills

Search bills enacted from the 104th Congress (1995–1996) to the present by bill number, word/phrase, date/session, or words in the index. Available as PDF file (via GPO Access) or as printer-friendly HTML display.

THOMAS:  View Public Laws 

The GPO Access files can be browsed by public law number or by type of bill. Note that full text is available only for laws passed from the 104th Congress (1995–1996) to the present.

GPO Access: Public and Private Laws

GPO Access contains the text of public and private laws enacted from the 104th Congress (1995–1996) to the present. The database for the current session of Congress is updated whenever the publication of a slip law is authorized by the Office of the Federal Register. Documents are available as ASCII text and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Beginning with the 110th Congress, GPO has signed and certified the PDF files to assure users that the online documents are official and authentic.

National Archives: Stay Updated About Public Laws

Keep up with new public laws by E-mail notification, World Wide Web, recorded telephone message, or Federal Register announcements.

LexisNexis: LexisNexis Congressional

Select “Legislative Histories, Bill, and Laws” to search the full text of public laws issued from 1988 to the present. Use the "Get a Document" feature to access public laws from 1988 to the present by bill number, public law number, or Statutes at Large citation.

Paper format

Public Laws are available in paper at many federal depository libraries and law libraries. The call number is AE 2.110:[public law number].

U.S. Government Bookstore (Government Printing Office)

Purchase individual copies of slip laws. Prices vary.

U.S. Government Subscriptions Catalog: Public Laws (U.S. Government Bookstore)

This subscription service provides paper copies of the slip laws for a fee. Subscription lasts for the current session of Congress.