Overall Currency Note: These compilations are current through the enactment of Public Law 118-78, enacted on July 30, 2024. The "As Amended Through" note in each compilation indicates the most recently enacted public law that amended the provisions compiled (unless those provisions were amended by a public law enacted after Public Law 118-78) The online version of the United States Code may be consulted for information regarding whether a provision has been affected by any later enactments.
United States Code classification tables, maintained by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel, show where recently enacted laws will appear in the U.S. Code and which sections of the Code have been amended by those laws.
When legislation cites or amends a statutory provision that is not part of a positive law title of the U.S. Code, the citation or amendment must be to the underlying statute, not to the U.S. Code. Statute Compilations are a useful drafting aid in these circumstances.
Unofficial documents: These compilations of public laws, as amended, are unofficial documents and should not be cited as legal evidence of the law. While these publications do not represent an official version of any Federal statute, substantial efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of its contents. The official version of Federal law is found in the United States Statutes at Large and in the United States Code. The legal effect to be given to the Statutes at Large and the United States Code is established by statute (1 U.S.C. 112, 204).
Corrections: If you notice an error(s) in a Statute Compilation that Congress did not enact erroneously into law (e.g. the word “Comissioner” is misspelled in the enacted statute), then please contact the House Office of the Legislative Counsel at [email protected] . and indicate where exactly you believe an error occurs within the Act along with the nature of the error (i.e. typo, missing amendment(s), erroneous execution of amendment(s), etc.). If applicable, also including details of a particular public law in which the error was introduced would be helpful and appreciated.
Statute Compilations in this collection represent select Federal law as originally enacted in the Statutes at Large version plus the execution of amendments made to them by subsequently enacted public laws, (if any).
Currency: Statute Compilations in this collection are updated as new public laws are enacted that amend the underlying statute since it was originally enacted. Only the most recent version of the compilation is available for download, but previous versions are retained in the GovInfo preservation repository.
Partial Compilations: Prior to the 112th Congress, Compilations were often created for only a certain title or section of a law (in some cases, other titles or sections of that law were maintained in a separate Compilation), or Compilations were created to include only the freestanding provisions of a law, excluding any amendatory provisions (in some cases, the omitted amendments were executed in a separate Compilation). Where one or more entire levels were omitted from a Compilation, you will see a line of asterisks in the Compilation.
In this example of a partial Statute Compilation (right), the title specifies the section and title of the Act that are included in this Compilation and the inclusion of asterisks indicates omitted text.
Amendatory Provisions: Unlike Statute Compilations that precede the 112th Congress, the entire Act (or legislative text including amendments made to existing law) appear in these newer Statute Compilations. Note, that the amendments to existing law have been carried out to their respective Statute Compilation. See that version of the Statute Compilation for the current state of such Act, if such statute is included in this collection.
Merged Compilations: The Public Health Service Act and the Social Security Act compilations are divided into multiple files by title numbers. For example, Social Security Act-TITLE I is accessed separately from Social Security Act-TITLE II. The separate files are listed together in order on the Statute Compilations browse page.
Compilations published as Committee Prints: Periodically, certain Statute Compilations are published as Congressional Committee Prints, which is a separate collection on GovInfo. The overall currency note above does not apply to the Compilations in the Committee Prints collection. You will need to reference the “as amended through” note on each individual Compilation in the Committee Prints collection to determine its currency.
For example, this compilation published as a Committee Print (PDF) clearly indicates it is a "COMMITTEE PRINT" and the amended through note states: "Compilation of the Social Security Laws Including the Social Security Act, As Amended, and Related Enactments Through January 1, 2009". Therefore, this Compilation reflects current law only through January 1, 2009.
You can find and search Statute Compilations by:
Titles: The display title for each Statute Compilation in Browse and on Details pages could be only one of several short titles by which the law or portion thereof may be cited, and compilations may include provisions in addition to that indicated by the display title. Compilations can be searched by any of the titles in the metadata for a compilation including the original title which precedes the enacting clause.
Please note that some short titles may exist in the metadata for a compilation that does not actually include those provisions (see note above regarding Partial Compilations).
Search using the title field – If a keyword search returns too many results for a title query, try searching in the title field. For example, to locate the Community Services Block Grant Act:
Search by short title or original title – For example, the compilation for the Homeland Security Act of 2002 can be found with any of the following searches:
Search by Public Law Citation – Select compilations have Public Law citations that, where available, reference the compilation's original Public Law number (before amended). You can search applicable compilations by this Public Law citation. For example, a search for plawcitation:(Public Law 107-296) returns the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
General keyword search – Unless using field operators, the basic search looks for your query in the full text and metadata of every publication in the system. When conducting a general keyword search, you may find it helpful to refine results by Statute Compilations under the Collection filter to the left of search results or add quotation marks around your search terms. See example.
Limit search to Statute Compilations collection:
GovInfo uses the package ID to construct predictable URLs to documents and Details pages for individual Statute Compilations.
