|
The following resources are freely available on the Internet and provide various formats and levels of access to
the Public and Private Laws of the United States.
-
Public and Private Laws from GPO Access contains the text of public and private laws enacted from the
104th (1995-96) Congress to present. The database is updated when the publication of a slip law is authorized by
the Office of the Federal Register. The database is browseable or searchable and documents are available as ASCII
text or PDF files.
-
Public Laws from Thomas provides links to public laws via GPO Access. Thomas also provides additional information
such as the bill number, the sponsor, cosponsors, the date the bill was introduced, and links to some of the reports. Coverage
is from the 93rd (1973) Congress to present, though full-text is not available for all documents.
-
GPO-PLAWS is a listserv from GPOLISTSERV. When you sign up, you will be sent
lists via e-mail of new public and private laws as they become available. Links to the full text of the law in either
ASCII text or PDF files are provided. To sign up, click on the link above, select "Online mailing
list archives," then select "GPO-PLAWS-L," and finally select "Join or leave the list." You also have the option of
searching or browsing the archive (coverage is from January 2003 - September 2004). For access to a more comprehensive
archive, try
PUBLAWS-L; coverage is from June 1999 to present.
-
"Current Session Public Law Numbers" is a webpage
hosted by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) in the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that shows a list
of Public Laws from the current session of Congress. The list is arranged by law number and includes Bill number, Public Law Number,
Name of Act, Approval date, and the U.S. Statutes at Large page citation.
-
Statutes at Large from the Library of Congress, "A Century of Law Making for a New Nation", covers the laws of the first
forty-three Congresses, 1789-1875. The eighteen volumes in this online collection are both browseable and searchable.
Note: For access to the text of Public Laws via Westlaw, go to US-PL (current session of Congress) or US-PL-OLD (historical from 1973 to 2004) or
USCCAN-PL (from 1973 to the present). For access to the text of Public Laws via Lexis, you can get newer P.L.s in the Public Law file (GENFED;PUBLAW)
back to the 2nd Session of the 100th Congress (1987), and older P.L.s in the Statutes at Large file (LEGIS;STATLG) back to 1798. Use the formats: 104 pl 365 or 38 stat 717.
| |
|
