Development

From earliest times, various attempts have been made to collect and publish the laws—not chronologically as they were passed, but according to subject matter.

Revised Statutes

Some of these efforts were undertaken privately by commercial publishers, and others were authorized by Congress, including the Revised Statutes of 1878 (18 Stat. 1, et seq.) and the Revised Statutes of 1925 (44 Stat. 1, et seq.).

United States Code

The first edition of the United States Code (U.S.C.) was published in 1926. A new edition is now published every six years, arranged in fifty-one subject titles, with cumulative annual Supplements published during the intervening years. Publication of each edition and each annual Supplement routinely occurs some two years after its cover date.

The U.S.C. does not contain all laws, but is limited to “a consolidation and codification of all the general and permanent laws of the United States,” as determined by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives (U.S.C., 2000 ed., page vii).