United States Code

The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives prepares and publishes the United States Code, which is the codification by subject matter of the laws of the United States. You can either search the United States Code database or browse through the United States Code Titles. Unlike some of the other free U.S. Code resources, this site allows you to download the entire title or chapter rather than just the individual sections. You can also search prior versions of the U.S. Code (1994, 1988, & 2000).

You can also access full text of the United States Code for 1994 and 2000 (in effect as of January 6, 2003) via GPO Access. Be sure to check out the "Search Tips" page.

Other websites provide access to the GPO Access version of the United States Code via their own search engines. An example is the U.S. Code collection provided by Cornell University's Legal Information Institute.

The Wirtz Labor Law Library has 3 copies of the Code in book format. The Code collection consists of the Official United States Code published by the GPO, the United States Code Service published by Lexis Publishing company and the United States Code Annotated published by West Publishing company. Lexis and West both update their copies of the code by either publishing major revisions to specific code titles or by supplementing the code with pocket parts on a yearly basis.

Contact the Wirtz Labor Library via email at library@dol.gov or the Law Librarian at 202-693-6613. We will be glad to help you find and e-mail code sections from this collection

Important to remember: GPO Access and other sites that mirror them are not updated on a daily basis as are Westlaw and Lexis. GPO database updates only occur when the print supplements and data files are provided to them by the Congress. However, they provide good starting points and easy referrals.