FINDING & UPDATING FEDERAL REGULATIONS

1. FINDING & UPDATING FEDERAL REGULATIONS A Brief Guide

2. Introduction Regulation: An authoritative requirement issued by a federal agency that implements a statute and has the force of law. Regulations are issued under authority delegated by a federal statute or by a Presidential executive order. Regulations implement, interpret, or enforce a law. Regulations have the same legal effect as statutes.

3. Highly Regulated Areas of Law • Banking • Immigration • Environmental • Government Contracts • Health • Labor and Employment • Securities

4. Federal Register

5. The Federal Register provides a uniform system for publishing Presidential documents; regulatory documents with general applicability and legal effect; proposed and final regulations; notices; and documents that are required by statute to be published. • Proposed and final regulations appear first in the Federal Register. In order for any administrative regulation to be legally effective, it must be published in the Federal Register.

6. Code of Federal Regulations

7. The Code of Federal Regulations(“CFR”)is an annual codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register. • The CFR is divided into fifty titles that represent broad areas of law that are subject to federal regulation. • Each title undergoes annual revision and contains the regulations in force at the time of publication.

8. Finding Regulations • Most often, research into federal regulations will begin with the Code of Federal Regulations. There are three basic methods for locating federal regulations: • Searching the full text online using Lexis, Westlaw, or the Web; • Using a looseleaf service; or, • Using printed indexes to the CFR and the Federal Register. • The National Archives and Records Administration Web site includes a detailed Federal Register tutorial.

9. Online Services Both the CFR and Federal Register are online in full text on Lexis, Westlaw, and the Web, which means that full text searching is available. New issues of the Federal Register are online the day that they are published.

10. Online Services, Federal Register

11. Online Services, CFR

12. Looseleaf Services Another way to find relevant regulations is to use a looseleaf service,which collects and reprints agency regulations in a particular subject area; for instance, the Federal Tax Reporter (CCH) These topical looseleaf services focus on the work of one of the major agencies and provide up-to-date, annotated texts of federal regulations in their subject areas. Note, however, that not all regulations are covered by a looseleaf service

13. West’s CFR Index & CIS Index The CFR is accompanied by a volume entitled "Index and Finding Aids," most of which consists of an index of broad subject headings and agency names. In addition, West publishes a multi-volume index to the CFRthat offers more detailed indexing:West's Code of Federal Regulations: General Index, which appears alongside the CFR in the Law Library Reading Room. For historical research, a good place to start is Congressional Information Service's Index to the Code of Federal Regulations .

14. West’s Federal Register Index and CIS Index The official Federal Register Index is published monthly and cumulated annually. It offers a consolidation of the entries in each issue's table of contents. Arrangement of entries is by agency, and not by subject. Each agency's listing, rules, proposed rules, and notices are listed alphabetically by subject. There is an annual subject index for the years 1936-1975. A more thorough index to the Federal Register was published between 1984 and 1998 by Congressional Information Service.

15. Updating Regulations Because some regulations undergo frequent revision, once you have found relevant regulations, it is critical to update your research.

16. Online Services Westlaw does not follow the same quarterly revision schedule as the printed CFR. If you are citing to a CFR section, then you must use the date of the printed volumes. On Westlaw, the preliminary title information at the top of the screen will indicate how current the text of the regulation is. If a section has been amended since that date, then there will be a note at the top of the screen indicating an update to the section. To reach the full text of the amending section in the Federal Register, click the KeyCite link. On Lexis, the full text of the CFR sections is updated more frequently than on Westlaw; however, there still may be a period of two or more weeks that you will need to check for amendments. To update regulations on Lexis, click the "Retrieve Regulatory Impact" link.

17. Online Services, Cont. To update regulations on the Web, you will need to search the Federal Register site from the date of the last revision of your title to the present. Another option for updating on the Web is the e-CFR from the National Archives and Records Administration. On this site, the text of the CFR is updated regularly with information from the Federal Register. The text is much more current than what is on the official CFR site or in the books, and is even more current than Lexis, Westlaw, and the looseleaf services. As amendments become effective, the changes are integrated directly into the e-CFR database. For amendments that have not yet become effective, there are links in the e-CFR database to the relevant amendments.

18. CFR List of Sections Affected (LSA) • Regulations can also be updated using printed sources. Most researchers, however, will prefer to use one of the online or looseleaf services. If you still choose to update using print sources, then the following steps will provide the current text of a regulation: • 1. Find the text of the regulation in the CFR; note the revision date on the cover of the volume • 2. Check the most recent pamphlet entitled LSA: List of CFR Sections Affected). References in the LSA are to Federal Register page numbers • Compare the date on your CFR volume to the inclusive dates listed on the title page of the LSA • If there is a time gap between the date on your CFR volume and the coverage of the latest LSA, then check the annual cumulation of the LSA for your title

19. CFR List of Sections Affected (LSA), Con’t 3. Check the list of "CFR Parts Affected during [month]" in the Federal Register issue for the last day of each full month not covered by step 2. 4. Check the cumulative list of "CFR Parts Affected" in the last issue of the Federal Register for the current month 5. Using the citations found in steps 2-4, if any, check the Federal Register issues cited to see the text of the changes

20. Citators For Administrative Materials A. Code of Federal Regulations To discover whether there are any cases that discuss a CFR section, use Shepard's on Lexis or KeyCite on Westlaw. B. Administrative Decisions Many, but not all, administrative decisions can also be updated using Shepard's on Lexis or KeyCite on Westlaw.