Historical Development of the Federal
Register
In earlier times U.S. Executive branch agencies and the
Office of the President would each publish their own regulations in various separate
publications, be they gazettes, bulletins, rulings, digests, pamphlets, notices, codes,
certificates, orders, and the like. This profusion of authoritative documents, especially
as agency regulations began to mushroom in the 1930's, made it extremely difficult for the
public to determine where a U.S. regulation could be found, when it was issued and whether
it had been altered or revoked.1 The U.S. Department of
Justice itself had a difficult time determining the status of regulations as became
embarrassingly apparent when the Department had to acknowledge before the Supreme Court
that an Executive order it was trying to enforce had been inadvertently revoked.2 To remedy this situation Congress, in 1935, passed the Federal
Register Act, which empowered the Archivist of the United States to establish a division
within the National Archives to be responsible, with the Government Printing Office, for
the publication of a daily Federal Register under the authority of a newly
established Administrative Committee of the Federal Register.3
The Federal Register Act requires that the Federal
Register, begun on March 14, 1936, be the Federal government's comprehensive vehicle
for publishing all agency promulgated rules and regulations as well as all Presidential
proclamations and executive orders or other such documents that the President determines
has general applicability and legal effect or as may be required by Act of Congress. Other
documents, such as notices of meetings, agency collection activities, applications, and
policy statements may be included as well. However, the law does not permit the
publication of comments or news items in the Federal Register.4
After the enactment of the Administrative Procedures Act in 1946, notices of proposed
rulemaking are now also required to be published.5 The
proposed rules are to be accompanied by a description of the subject and issues involved
and from 1947 to 1972 these descriptions in the preamble to the proposed rules were about
the only place to find an explanation or rationale for a rule.
Beginning in the 1960's finalized rules began to be
accompanied in the Federal Register by brief explanations, usually just after the
text of the rule, but it was not until 1973 that final rules were required by the
Administrative Committee of the Federal Register to have in their preamble to the rule a
statement summarizing the general subject matter of the rule.6
A rule effective on April 1, 1977, requires that comments to proposed rules and answers to
them be summarized in the preamble before the rule and it also requires that agencies
submit their final and proposed rules with specific preamble heading material.7
Historical Development of the Code of Federal
Regulations
The Federal Register Act originally provided, within six
months, for a complete compilation of all existing regulations promulgated prior to the
first publication of the Federal Register. However, this was deemed inefficient,
and so instead of a "compilation" of existing regulations, the Federal Register
Act was amended in 1937 to provide a "codification" of all regulations every
five years.8 A six member Codification Board was established
which determined the precise structure of the new Code of Federal Regulations
(CFR). A similar organization to the United States Code (USC) was followed by the
Board so that a majority of the 50 titles to the CFR (some held in reserve) have similar
alphabetically arranged subject categories and title numbers to that of the 50 titles in
the USC.9
The first edition of the CFR was published in 1938 and
included all finalized regulations that were published in the Federal Register from
March 14, 1936 to June 1, 1938, as well as those agency regulations deposited with the
Archivist, and still in effect, that may have been published by the agencies before March
14, 1936. Source notes in the first edition of the CFR are to pages in the rebound edition
(1936-1938) of the Federal Register, not to the original pages in the daily
edition.
Supplements to the first edition of the CFR were published
for the period beginning on June 1, 1938, to the end of 1938 (in 1 vol.), and for the
years 1939 (in 2 vols.), 1940 (in 4 vols.), and 1941 (in 4 vols.). Due to the war effort
there was no 1942 supplement and the new CFR edition that was suppose to come out in 1943
was instead replaced with a cumulative supplement (in 10 vols.) that covered regulations
still in force and published in the Federal Register from June 1, 1938 to June 1,
1943. Thus this publication was an adjunct to the original 1938 edition, not a
replacement. Supplements were again published for the period to the end of 1943 (in 2
vols.), for 1944 (in 3 vols.), for 1945 (in 4 vols.), for 1946 (in 6 vols.) and for 1947
(in 5 vols.). A supplement was not published for 1948, "because preparations were
being made for the second edition of the CFR to replace the 1938 codification and the 1943
update."10
In 1949, the second edition of the Code of Federal
Regulations was finally published. It included all the regulations still in effect as
of January 1, 1949, and was largely taken from the 1938 edition, the supplements, and the
regulations issued in the Federal Register in 1948. However, there were some
additional regulations added that were not published in the Federal Register. These
were generally either rules of procedure or rules received by the Division of the Federal
Register and considered as officially promulgated and applicable to the general public or
a class of the public and effective on or after January 1, 1949.11
Each book of the 1949 CFR, containing one or more titles, also had a subject index and a
place at the back to fit a cumulative pocket supplement. Cumulative pocket supplements
were issued annually for each book until it was deemed appropriate that a new edition of a
particular book should be published with space in the back for subsequent pocket
supplements. Each supplement also contained various finding aids, including a
"Codification Guide" or "List of Sections Affected" as it was later
called.
After considerable discussion on the best way to proceed,
beginning in 1963 for some titles and for all titles in 1967, the Office of the Federal
Register (OFR)12 began publishing yearly revisions to the
titles of the CFR, effective on January 1 of each year. The new books were bound in soft
covered, dark blue paper stock, but beginning in 1970 each annual edition of the CFR has a
different color on its outside binding. If there are no changes to regulations in certain
books then a colored paper stock is issued so it can be used to cover the older edition.
Although ponderous in size, an annual republication of the CFR in softbound books, instead
of a through cumulative supplements or loose-leafs allows the researcher to determine how
a regulation read on any given date.13
Soon, however, it became apparent to the OFR that revising
the entire Code of Federal Regulations, at the same time, was administratively
unmanageable. So beginning on October 1, 1972, the OFR has divided the titles of the CFR
into four groups with each group being revised in staggered quarters of the year. Titles
1-16 are revised effectively on January 1 of each year. Titles 17-27 are revised
effectively on April 1 of each year. Titles 28-41 are revised effectively on July 1 of
each year, and titles 42-50 are revised effectively on October 1 of each year.
Contents and Organization of the Federal Register
and CFR
The daily Federal Register is generally divided into
three large sections consisting of "Rules and Regulations", "Proposed
Rules", and "Notices". These three groups are sandwiched between a title
page and table of contents in the front (with pages numbered in uppercase Roman numerals)
and certain reader aids in the back (with pages numbered as lower case Roman numerals).
Frequently, major proposed and final rules, are published with their own title page and
published as various parts (starting at Part II) in the back of an issue after the
"Notices" section. Presidential proclamations and Executive orders are generally
published just before the "Rules and Regulations" section unless a Presidential
Documents section is assigned its own part in which case it will be published in the back,
just before the "Reader Aids" section.14
Since 1977 preambles to final and proposed rules have been
required to contain certain headings and related material including the name of the
agency, a brief line on the action being taken, a summary of the rule, the effective date
of the rule (or date when comments are due), contact information, and supplementary
information.15 The supplementary information frequently
provides a discussion of the background and need for the regulation, and in case of a
final rule how it differs from the proposed rule as well as responses to comments made on
the proposed rule.
Unless there are certain problems with a document, it is
generally published three working days after it is received by the OFR,16
which is normally about a week to ten days after the agency releases the rule (the
approval date may be even earlier). You can usually find a newly approved regulation on an
agency's public Web site before it is published in the Federal Register. However,
the effective date of a rule, which is required, with some exceptions, to be not less than
30 days after publication, is generally based on when it is published in the Federal
Register.17
The Administrative Procedure Act, as amended by the Freedom
of Information Act, requires that certain documents be published in the Federal
Register.18 These include substantive rules and
interpretations of general applicability, statements of general policy, rules of practice
and procedure, descriptions of agency forms, rules of organization, descriptions of an
agency's central and field organization, and amendments or revisions to the foregoing.19 Matters of national secrecy or those relating to an agency's
internal management have always been exempted from publication.20
The Administrative Procedure Act also requires notice of proposed rulemaking to be
published in the Federal Register with the exception of 1) a substantive rule which
grants or recognizes an exemption or relieves a restriction; 2) interpretive rules and
statements of policy; or 3) as otherwise provided by the agency for good cause found and
published with the rule.21
To assist Federal agencies in preparing documents to be
published in the Federal Register the OFR has published a Document Drafting
Handbook. The Handbook makes no distinctions between the word "rule"
from the word "regulation", but, pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act,
it does make a clear distinctions between a final rule and a proposed rule and also
attempts to clarify the kinds of documents that are considered rules and regulations,
proposed rules, and notices.22 The Handbook also
allows for the publication of interim or temporary rules that are effective immediately
for a short period or for a definable period of time with comments solicited for later
consideration.23 Because U.S. courts generally defer to
Federal agency rules that have gone through notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements, it
makes a difference in the authority of an interim rule, policy statement, or
interpretation, if they have not gone through such a process.24
Unlike the Federal Register, the Code of Federal
Regulations does not contain preambles, proposed rules, notices, or even general
policy statements. It contains just the finalized and effective rules of Federal agencies
as well as any related official interpretations or supplements to those rules. These rules
are organized by subject matter into CFR titles, chapters, parts, and sections. Generally
an agency's rules are all placed under one title or chapter. However, unlike most of the United
States Code, sections or parts of the CFR that have been rescinded are frequently
reused as a publishing vehicle for new unrelated regulations. CFR titles are published
annually according to a staggered schedule (see above) and finalized rules in the Federal
Register update the annual rules published in the CFR.
Title 3 of the CFR contains all the Presidential
proclamations and Executive orders issued that year and as such, it is not updated like
agency rules. Libraries are wise to retain this Title indefinitely. A one volume Codification
of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders was last issued in 1990 and covered
the period 1945-1989. The OFR on its Web site now maintains a searchable electronic
version of the 1990 publication with indices and links to executive orders and
proclamations, as well as an online disposition table for all executive orders issued from
1937 to the present.25 Beginning with Clinton Administration the Executive orders on the
later site are also available in full text.
Electronic Sources of the Federal
Register and CFR
There are a number of electronic sources to the Federal
Register and the CFR. GPO Access, for instance, maintains the Federal Register from
1994 forward with portable document format (PDF) copies from 1995 forward, and it has
annual CFR issues with PDF copies from 1997 forward. The GPO Access Federal Register
and CFR sites are both searchable and browseable. LexisNexis and Westlaw also have the Federal
Register online from July 1 of 1980, with citation retrieval capability and with all
pages noted in versions after 1992. Lexis has the CFR editions back to 1981 and Westlaw
has them back to 1984. They both have citation retrieval capability for sections in the
current CFR. Dialog has the Federal Register from 1985 forward, CQ.com
has it from 1990 forward and GalleryWatch.com and LoisLaw.com have it from 1999 forward.
There are also a number of new electronic products on federal
regulations. For instance, in January, 2003, the Bush Administration
launched a new citizen friendly Web site called "Regulations.gov."
The site tries to encourage electronic comments on proposed regulations from ordinary
citizens by presenting a simple way to search, link and submit comments to agency proposed
regulations that are still open for comment.
GPO Access has a new "Electronic Code of Federal
Regulations (e-CFR)" service under development which gives you CFR sections in their
current form with any recent amendments from the Federal Register already incorporated.26 The e-CFR service is updated daily and also allows you to
separately view appendices and supplements to CFR parts, instead of having them tacked
together onto the concluding final section of a part of the CFR. Other similar electronic
CFR updating services include LexisNexis, Westlaw, LoisLaw.com, TheLawNet.net, and VersusLaw.net.
Portions of the CFR are also available from other commercial vendors in selected subject areas.
The William S. Hein & Co., Inc., has recently optically
scaned nearly all issues of the Federal Register (within one or two months of the present)
placing them on its Hein
OnLine service.27 The service has browse capability, citation
retrieval capability, and even word search capability of the unedited optically scanned
text. It also has the annual Federal Register Index and the List of CFR
Sections Affected. In addition, the company is working on digitizing
all past editions of the Code of Federal Regulations.
Finally, the National Archives, through its Office of the
Federal Register, maintains a Web site on the Federal Register and CFR with a
number of helpful publications, including links to GPO Access sites, some on Executive
Orders and Presidential proclamations (noted above) and a "Public
Inspection List" of documents to be published in the next day's Federal
Register.
Finding Older Issues of the Federal Register and
CFR
The Federal Register has been published daily each
federal working day28 since 1936 on newspaper quality paper.
Only the earliest issues, from March 14, 1936 to June 1, 1938, were republished on better
quality paper and repaginated in a bound form much like the bound form of the Congressional
Record. A few libraries hold the entire Federal Register set in paper form and
continue to bind the daily editions like other periodicals,29
but most have discarded their paper copies in favor of microfilm or microfiche. The annual
Federal Register Index, is generally retained by libraries having microform copies.
Federal depository libraries, academic law libraries, and Federal agency libraries are all
good sources for finding older issues of the Federal Register and the Code of
Federal Regulations, but they may not have complete sets. Searching for the titles on
OCLC may help you locate libraries that have the years and titles that you are interested
in obtaining.
The William S. Hein & Co., Inc. and LexisNexis Academic
and Library Solutions (LNALS, formerly known as CIS - the Congressional Information
Service) both sell microfiche copies of the Federal Register from 1936 to the present.
With the Hein subscription comes a hard copy of the annual Federal Register Index
(albeit somewhat reduced in size). LNALS also sells the annual CFR (or its annual
supplements) in microfiche from 1938 to the present. In addition, as noted above, Hein OnLine
has recently made available, by optical scan method, close to the entire Federal Register
series in electronic format (see above). This is a searchable database and the company is currently updating that series and beginning
to digitize past editions of the CFR as well.
Citations, ID Numbers, and the
Unified Agenda
In its own documents, the Office of the Federal Register (OFR)
cites to the Federal Register by employing the
volume number, the publication abbreviation "FR", and the beginning page number
on which the document or the regulation within the document begins, as well as the date of
publication. An example would be "67 FR 49264, July 30, 2002." The Bluebook30 uses more detail, including the name of the regulation, the
volume number, the abbreviation "Fed. Reg.", as well as the publication date and
where the document is to be codified, as in "National Coastal Wetlands Conservation
Grant Program, 67 Fed. Reg. 49264 (July 30, 2002) (to be codified at 50 C.F.R. pt.
84)." You can obtain a document by citation method on either Lexis or Westlaw by simply
using an FR cite method without reference to a date or codified cite as in "67 FR 49264."
Citations to the Code of Federal Regulations in the
Federal Register are cited
with the title number, the abbreviation CFR, the word "part" or the symbol
"§" for section, and the number of the part or section, as in "12 CFR part 220" or
"12 CFR §220.1." The Bluebook citation method is similar to the above, but it
requires you to use periods in "C.F.R." and the issue year of the C.F.R title as
well, as in 12 C.F.R. pt. 220 (1999). By just using a simple CFR part or section citation,
a current (or near current) CFR document can be obtained on Westlaw and Lexis as in "12 CFR 220.1."
CFR titles have chapters corresponding to different agencies or bureaus. For instance, 12 C.F.R. Ch. II
corresponds to regulations published by the Federal Reserve Board. Material below a CFR section is referred
to as a paragraph or paragraphs, as in 12 CFR 220.1(b)(2).
Although
44 USC §1510(e) states that
the documents in the CFR are only "prima facie evidence" of the text of the documents in the Federal Register, courts
regularly accept CFR cites without reference to FR citations from which a rule was
taken. Indeed,
according to 44 USC §1507
documents in the Federal Register themselves have only a "rebuttable presumption"
that they are duly issued, prescribed and promulgated and are true copies of the originals approved
by a regulatory agency. But it does not appear that discrepancies between the original documents,
the Federal Register documents, and CFR documents have ever been litigated. In part, this
may be because Federal regulatory agencies can and regularly do make technical corrections to their
regulations published in the Federal Register. However, the Office of the Federal Register
will not certify the accuracy of a particular regulation in the CFR and thus for safety sake,
it "may" be advisable for litigants to note the FR citation history to sections
in the CFR pertinent to the litigation. This may be especially important if there is a question
about the regulation because only the documents published in the Federal Register, and not
the CFR, is there any accompanying explanation to a proposed or finalized rule. In some sections of
the CFR it may be hard to trace its FR citation history and you may need to perform
an online search or search the annual index or List of CFR Sections Affected (see below).
Besides citations, there are several identification numbers
to Federal Register documents. These include the agency docket number found at the
beginning of the regulation (the same number is used for the proposed and final rule) or
the Federal Register document number found at the end of the regulation (unique for
each document published, including notices). The Web version of the Federal Register
on GPO Access uses the unique FR Document number for its URLs as well as one that
utilizes the date.
Another identification number to some regulations is the RIN
or regulation identification number found at the top of the document right underneath the
agency docket number. RIN numbers are assigned to descriptions/status reports of agency
regulations under development and published twice a year in the Federal Register
during April and October pursuant to the Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order
12866. GPO Access does not include this semi-annual publication in its online version of
the Federal Register, but places it separately in its multi-database search
facility under the term Unified Agenda.
Indexing to the Federal Register and
CFR
Since its inception in 1936, the Federal Register has
always been accompanied by an annual Federal Register Index. The Index is
organized by agency (or subsidiary agency) and then within the agency index there are
three groups -- rules and regulations, proposed rules, and notices, which is then broken
down into alphabetically arranged subjects. Within the main index are scattered subjects
referring you to the appropriate agency or agencies dealing with those particular
subjects. Cites in the Index are to page numbers only, but in the back of the
publication there is table with corresponding dates. A cumulative monthly issue is also
published, with the final January-December issue of each year becoming the annual index.
Readers must be cautious in assuming that the annual index for a particular agency is
complete. From 1984-1998 the Congressional Information Service (CIS - now called
LexisNexis Academic and Library Solutions) published a more detailed annual index entitled
CIS Federal Register Index.
The Office of the Federal Register also prepares and
publishes an annual CFR Index and Finding Aids. The "Index" portion of
the publication is organized by detailed subjects with references to CFR parts. The
"Findings Aids" portion is divided into four sections including the following
titles: "List of Agency-Prepared Indexes Appearing in Individual CFR Volumes;"
"Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules;" "List of CFR Titles, Chapters,
Subchapters, and Parts;" and "Alphabetical List of Agencies Appearing in the
CFR." Particularly helpful is the parallel authorities section, which provides CFR
cites to regulations from various legal authorities that are organized by U.S.C. section,
U.S. statute page number, Presidential proclamation number, and Executive order number.
From 1949 to 1963 a specialized index was published in the back of each book of the CFR,
which sometimes covered one or multiple titles of the CFR, and since 1975 a few agencies
(see list in the Index) have prepared an agency index that is published along with
their regulations in the CFR.
The Index and Finding Aids is also reproduced annually
as part of the United States Code Service: Lawyer's Edition published by Lexis
Publishing, and a more detailed Index to the Code of Federal Regulations is
published quarterly by LexisNexis Academic and Library Solutions.31
Another related index is Shepard's Code of Federal
Regulations Citations. Published by Lexis Publishing and organized by CFR section, it
includes citations to judicial interpretations and treatments of regulations in federal
courts since about 1949. It also cites to state court decisions and law reviews since 1977
and provides related cites to ALR annotations as well. Reference notes to sections in both
the United States Code Service and the United States Code Annotated also
cite to related CFR sections. However, it is important to note that authorities cited in
sections of the CFR itself are often to broad policies and laws that may or may not appear
in any index or reference note.
List of CFR Sections Affected
Finally, no article on the Federal Register and CFR
would be complete without making reference to the List of CFR Sections Affected
(LSA).32 Begun in 1950 by being placed in the cumulative
pocket supplements to the 1949 edition of the CFR, the LSA is organized by CFR title and
part and contains page references to the annual Federal Register volumes that
publish changes to final and proposed rules in the CFR. The changes referenced include
final and proposed amendments, revocations, or newly established regulations published in
the Federal Register. The LSA makes it easier for researchers to track the
development and ascertain the currency of particular regulations. This kind of regulatory
history tracking is more difficult for early documents published in the Federal
Register before 1949, as those did not note what were the corresponding CFR citations.
Before 1964 LSA was simply called List of Sections Affected and contained little
information on how a CFR was affected. Since 1964 LSA has provided section-by-section
information on how CFR parts were affected. However, LSA provides minimal details on
proposed rules (and IRS final rules), and just notes that a certain part is affected.
Beginning in 1963, monthly and annual issues of the LSA were
published instead of being inserted into cumulative pocket supplements. The cumulative
January-December issue of the LSA would then be designated as the annual issue for the
volume. In 1972 the titles of the CFR began to be published with staggered effective dates
and after that time certain monthly issues of the LSA would be designated as the annual
issue for certain titles of the CFR (December issue for Titles 1-16, March issue for
Titles 17-27, June issue for Titles 28-41, and September issue for Titles 42-50).
Subscribers are instructed to save the four annual LSA issues and sometimes other months
as well.
Four compilations of the LSA have been published by the
Government Printing Office encompassing the years 1949 to 1963, 1964 to 1972 (2 vols.),
1973 to 1985 (4 vols.), and 1986 to 2000 (4 vols). The volumes are organized by CFR title
and then by year within each title. Only finalized rules to CFR sections are included,
which note the actions taken and the corresponding page numbers in the Federal
Register. The 1986-2000 LSA
compilation is available electronically on GPO Access.
LSA is also available on GPO Access from 1997 to the present.33 and GPO Access now as an prototype electronic service, called
e-CFR, that actually updates the regulatory text on a daily basis. Similar electronic
updated text services are available commercially (see above). Some libraries continue to
retain all four of the LSA's that complete a year's cumulative listings. Other libraries
now rely on the multi-volume LSA as well as the LSA on GPO Access, the annual Federal
Register Index, and electronic searching of the Federal Register.
In the "Readers Aids" section of each issue of the
daily Federal Register there is a cumulative list of CFR parts affected that month.
A current cumulative list for the month can be found in the most recent issue of the Federal
Register and earlier monthly cumulative lists can be found on the last day of the
month that a Federal Register was issued. Thus it is possible to determine the
currency of a CFR part by reviewing the annual CFR together with the most recent monthly
LSA supplemented by the most recent Federal Register.
A final caution in conducting research using the LSA is to
note that parts to the CFR which have been rescinded by a Federal agency may be reused by
an agency at a latter time for any newly established regulation on a totally different
subject matter. Also , certain CFR titles have been reassigned or removed, including
titles 2, 6, 10, 11, 34, 40, 44, and 48.
Concluding Statement
Although not perfect, the Federal Register
and the CFR appear to have met their original purpose of providing the public with a
comprehensive publication vehicle for all the regulations issued by Federal agencies and
the President. The Federal Register, faithfully prepared and published every
workday since 193628, and the annual Code of Federal
Regulations which it supplements, are considered to be the core documents of the
Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, and as such have become indispensable to the
Government's operations and to it's communication to the public which it serves.
Notes:
1. See generally Griswold, E.N. Government in ignorance of the law; a plea for
better publication of executive legislation. 48 Harv. L. Rev. 198-215 (1934).
2. Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293
U.S. 388 (1935).
3. Act of July 26, 1935; ch. 417, 49 Stat. 500-503,
(current version at 44
§§U.S.C. 1501-1511 (2000)).
4. 44 U.S.C.
§1505.
5. Act of June 11, 1946, ch. 324, §4, 60 Stat. 237, 239 (current version at 5 U.S.C. 553 (2000)).
6. 37 Fed. Reg. 23602 (Nov. 4, 1972) (codified at 1 C.F.R. pts. 1-22).
7. 41 Fed. Reg. 56624 (Dec. 29, 1976) (codified at 1 C.F.R. §18.12).
8. Act of June 19, 1937, ch. 369, 50 Stat. 304-305.
9. Similar subject categories and title numbers between the CFR and the USC include titles 1, 3, 5, 7, 8,
12, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, and
49.
10. Jablonski, Sandra. The Federal Register and the Code of Federal
Regulations, p. 1. Draft paper prepared for an LLSDC Legislative SIS presentation on
February 29, 1996 (published on the LLSDC Web site at http://www.llsdc.org/sis/legislative/fr-cfr-1996.pdf).
11. Id., p. 2.
12. The Division of the Federal Register was renamed the Office of the
Federal Register on February 6, 1959.
13. For past discussions on the proper way to publish the CFR see Factor,
Modernizing federal regulations publications, 21 Fed. B. J. 219 (1961); Eberhart, A modern
approach to making federal regulations available, 22 Fed. B. J. 32 (1962); and Federal
register and the Code of federal regulations - a reappraisal, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 439 (1966).
14. From May 1, 1971 to February 19, 1982, a highlights section preceded
the daily table of contents section. Currently a section on "CFR Parts Affected in
this Issue" follows the table of contents section and the "Reader Aids"
section in the back includes customer service and electronic information, pages covered
during the month, CFR parts affected during the month, a list of rules going into effect
during the month, a list of comments due during the next week, a list of new public laws,
and a notice on how to receive information about new public laws electronically. A good
overview of the Federal Register can be found in the OFR publication, The federal
register: what it is and how to use it; last revised in 1992.
15. 1 C.F.R. §18.2.
16. See publishing schedule at 1 C.F.R. §17.2.
17. 5 U.S.C. §553(d) and 1 C.F.R. §18.17.
18. The Administrative Procedure Act (1946) was amended by the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA, Pub. L. No. 89-487, July 4, 1966, 80 Stat. 250) with an effective
date of July 4, 1967. However, on September 6, 1966, Title 5 of the U.S. Code was codified
into positive law by Pub. L. No. 89-554 without the FOIA amendments. Consequently on June
5, 1967 Pub. L. No. 90-23 was enacted to codify the Freedom of Information Act as section
552 of Title 5 of the U.S. Code. Note that unlike some codifications, which utilize unused
sections of the U.S. Code, sections 501-559 of Title 5, which was assigned to the
Administrative Procedure Act, had been assigned to unrelated subjects before the Title was
codified into positive law.
19. 5 U.S.C.
§552(a)(1).
20. 5 U.S.C.
§552(b)(1) & (2). Between 1965 and 1988
secret federal regulations, known as the the Code of Emergency
Federal Regulations, were promulgated to be triggered
automatically in the event of a national emergency. These
regulations are available by written request to the Office of
the Federal Register. They are also available from the William
S. Hein Co. (http://www.wshein.com).
21. 5 U.S.C.
§553(b).
22. Office of the Federal Register, Document Drafting Handbook, Oct. 1998
revision, available electronically at
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/write/handbook/.
See particularly sections 1.1, 2.1, and 3.1.
23. Id., sec. 2.1.
24. For discussion of these issues see the Spring 2002 (v. 54, No. 2)
issue of Administrative Law Review; particularly noteworthy is the article by William
Funk, When is a "rule" a regulation? Marking a clear line between nonlegislative
rules and legislative rules, 54 Admin. L. Rev. 639-671 (2002).
25. See
Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders (1945-1989)
and
Executive Orders Disposition Tables (1937 to Present).
26. See http://www.gpoaccess.gov/ecfr/.
27. As of June 2005 HeinOnLine (http://www.HeinOnLine.org/)
has made available the Federal Register from 1936 through 2000 (vols. 1 - 65).
28. From 1936 through 1972 publication of the Federal Register occurred on
the day after it was prepared, including Saturdays, but not Sundays and Mondays or the day
after federal holidays. Since 1973 publication has occurred Mondays through Fridays, but
not on holidays. The pages in the annual volumes have gradually increased from some 3,000 pages in the 1930's
to some 75,000 pages today (see Annual
Federal Register Pages Published).
29. Libraries with a complete set and known by the author to bind the
paper edition of the Federal Register include Office of the Federal Register Library, the
Department of Interior Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
30. The bluebook: a uniform system of citation, seventeenth edition,
2000, p. 96, Harvard Law Review Association.
31. See http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/3cis/cise/IndexCodeFederalRegulations.htm.
32. Before 1964 the LSA was just called "List of Sections Affected"
33. See http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/lsa/browslsa.html.
[Return to Top] - [Research Guide in PDF]
Maintained by Rick McKinney, Law
Library, Federal Reserve Board
Last update:
August, 2007
