Administrative Law Research: Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations Trisha Simonds Fall 2008.

Administrative Law Research: Federal Register and

Code of FederalRegulations

Trisha Simonds

Fall 2008

Administrative Powers

Many laws enacted by Congress require agencies to issue regulations which are published through the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations

Federal Register

Provides official notice; published every weekday, except holidays,

about 60,000 pages per year

Citation in FR looks like:

• 68 FR 58367

• This means “volume 68” beginning on “page 58367”

• A new volume begins each year in January.

• Pages are numbered consecutively throughout the calendar year from January 1 to December 31.

FR includes

• Proposed rules

• Final rules & regulations

• Notices from agencies

• Presidential documents

• Sunshine Act meetings

Notices

• Notices are documents other than rules and regulations that are applicable to the public.

• They are not codified in the CFR.

• Examples: grant application deadlines, availability of environmental impact statements, delegation of authority.

The Beginning of the Process

• Agencies propose new regulations and publish them in the Federal Register

• Public comment is invited

• Final language is published in the FR

Proposed Rule• Name of Agency

•CFR Title and Parts Affected

•Brief description of subject (bolded)

•Summary (why proposed?)

•Date (deadline to comment)

•Supplementary info (explanatory documents)

Final Rule• Name of agency or sub-agencyName of agency or sub-agency• CFR title and parts affectedCFR title and parts affected• Type of action, i.e., Final RuleType of action, i.e., Final Rule• SummarySummary• Effective dateEffective date• Background and summary of Background and summary of

feedback feedback• Section-by-Section AnalysisSection-by-Section Analysis

FR Unified Agenda• AKA, the Semiannual Regulatory

Agenda• Published in April and October• Important organizing tool for

agencies and attorneys• Summarizes rules and proposed

rules that each agency expects to issue during the following twelve months

FR Table of Contents

• Arranged alphabetically by agency name

• Covers all documents in one daily issue

• Under each agency documents are arranged by type—Rules, Proposed Rules, Notices

• Beginning page number

Federal Register Index

• Separate monthly publication

• Consolidation of the Tables of Contents of each daily Federal Register issues

• Arranged the same as the daily Table of Contents, alphabetically by agency, with beginning page number

Code of Federal Regulations

• After publication as a Final Rule in FR, regulations are codified in the annual CFR

• Has 50 titles representing broad subject areas

• Each title is further divided by chapter (usually the name of the issuing agency), part, and section

Citation in the CFR looks like

42 CFR 64

This means “title 42, part 64”

42 CFR 220.1

This means “title 42, part 220, section 1”

CFR Indexing

• Revised annually on January 1

• Subject/agency index

• List of agency-prepared indexes appearing in individual CFR volumes

Revision schedule for CFR

• Titles 1-16 revised as of January 1

• Titles 17-27 revised as of April 1

• Titles 28-41 revised as of July 1

• Titles 42-50 revised as of October 1

• Revision date is printed on the cover of each volume. Each year is a different color.

GPO Access

• http://www.gpoaccess.gov• http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr• http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr• http://www.gpoaccess.gov/lsa• Usually updated faster than the print FR• FR 1994-date with PDF 1995-date• CFR with PDF 1997-date• Unified Agenda 1994-date

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New FR website

• http://www.regulations.gov

• Designed to be citizen friendly to encourage comments on proposed regulations from ordinary citizens

• Implemented by the Bush Administration in January 2003

Lexis and Westlaw

• Both have FR July 1, 1980-date

• Lexis has CFR 1981-date

• Westlaw has CFR 1984-date

Hein Online

• http://www.heinonline.org

• FR 1936 - July 2008 in PDF

• CFR 1938 – 2008 in PDF

• Browse capability

• Citation retrieval capability

• Word search capability of unedited optically scanned text

• Any questions?

• Thank you for attending!