USAID Library Guides: Legal Research Guide: United States Statutes and Codes

Free Sources of Statutes and Codes

The United States Code and most state codes are available for free online. These sources usually only provide the text of the statutes, however, and do not include annotations or case references. The online versions of codes also may not be current, which means they may not reflect the changes made by more recent legislation. Researchers therefore need to be careful to update these code sections with relevant case law and session laws.

United States Code

These sources contain the most recent official version of the U.S. Code, which is published every six years. As a result, some individual code sections will be out-of-date and these sources need to be updated with session laws. As noted in the list of sources below, the version provided by Cornell's Legal Information Institute provides links to recent legislation so researchers can easily determine how a particular code section has changed since the last official publication.

GovInfo United States Code
Browseable and searchable by citation and keyword. To search the full text of the Code, use the advanced search interface. Coverage 1994 - present.
Legal Information Institute United States Code
Browseable and searchable by citation and keyword. Each code section includes a "Current through" notation and an "Updates" tab, which provides a list of recent modifications. Coverage is most recent official version (with links to recent changes).
Library of Congress United States Code
Digitized version of the official Code in print, offered as PDF. Browseable by edition and then by Title. Coverage 1925 ed. - 1988 ed.
U.S. House of Representatives United States Code
Searchable by citation and keyword, Use the "Classification" link to find tables providing cross-reference between code sections and recently enatcted public laws. Coverage is most recent official version (with tables indicating recent changes).
United States Code Classification Tables
These tables show where recently enacted laws will appear in the United States Code and which sections of the Code have been amended by those laws. The tables sorted in Public Law order may be used to identify the sections of the Code affected by a particular law and whether a particular section of the Code has recently been amended.

Finding Statutes

A statute is a written law enacted by a legislature. When a bill is passed by the legislature, a statute is issued in a form called a slip law. The slip laws of a session of the legislature are collected in a chronological publication known as session laws. Finally, the laws are arranged by subject in a code. Codes are kept up-to-date in print by pocket parts and supplements.

If you have a citation to a statute, you can use the citation information to quickly locate it in print or electronically. If you don't have a citation, however, you may be able to find a statute by its title (e.g. "Affordable Care Act") by using a popular name table for your jurisdiction. Otherwise, you can use the subject index to the jurisdiction's code, which is nearly always found in the last volume(s) of the code. For most jurisdictions, current statutes are also available for free on the web, although this approach is best if you have either a citation or some exact language from the statute.

Federal Statutes

Federal laws are issued by Congress in slip law form immediately after they become law, and are made available on the web as they are passed by Congress.

After the slip laws are issued, the laws of each session of Congress are printed together in volumes called "session laws." The official version of the federal session laws is called the United States Statutes at Large. Another version of the session laws is a series called the United States Code Congressional and Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.) which is published by the West Group.

Finally, federal statutes are officially "codified" (meaning they are compiled and arranged by subject) in the United States Code (U.S.C.). The U.S. Code also comes in two annotated versions called the United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.), which is published by the West Group, and the United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.), which is published by Thomson Reuters. The unofficial versions come out much more quickly than the official versions, and contain notes, references and certain other features which are designed to make them easier to use. However, in scholarly and court documents, you must cite to the official version, provided it has the current text of the statute.