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Lesson Four: Using the Federal Register

There are several options available for finding regulations in the Federal Register. Attorneys, lobbyists and others interested in tracking regulatory activities usually look at the table of contents of the Federal Register every day. The contents are arranged alphabetically by agency and a summary of actions is provided in the contents.

Like the CFR, the Federal Register is available in both electronic formats (web, Lexis, and Westlaw) and in print.

Searching the Federal Register Online
Web - To find by Federal Register citation, use the "Browse Feature" on the web site, or use the page number as a search term.

If you are using a word search, you can search the entire Federal Register database or limit your search to a particular date or range of dates and/or a particular action (e.g., final rules only). Boolean searching is available, although it is not as sophisticated as the terms and connectors searching on Lexis and Westlaw. Complete searching instructions are provided. You will have a chance to use the word search feature in the Research Example in the next section of this tutorial.

We highly recommend the Federal Register web site. It is easy to use, authoritative and free. Another benefit to using the Federal Register web site is that the documents are available in both text and PDF format.

Lexis - To find a regulation by citation, choose "Get a Document," then type in your citation. The abbreviation for the Federal Register is fed reg.

Searching works just the same as in any other database on Lexis, you can choose terms and connectors or natural language searching. You will find Federal Register under Federal Legal-US. If you know the name of the issuing agency, you can use segment searching to narrow your search. For example, to search for recent FCC regulations on slamming, an effective search would be:

telephone /p slamming and agency ("federal communications commission") and date=2001

Westlaw - To find a regulation by citation, choose "Find" and type in the citation. The abbreviation for the Federal Register is fr.

Searching regulations on Westlaw is just like searching any other database on Westlaw. The database code is FR. The search used in the Lexis example, above, would look like this on Westlaw:

telephone /p slamming and pr("federal communications commission") and date(2001)

Searching the Federal Register in Print
The Federal Register has both official and commercial indexes. The official Federal Register Index (4th Floor, KF70 .A2 Index) is published monthly and consists of a consolidation of the entries in each issue's table of contents. Entries are arranged by agency, not by subject. Within each agency's listing, rules, proposed rules, and notices are listed alphabetically by subject.

A much more thorough index to the Federal Register was published between 1984 and 1998 by Congressional Information Service. For assistance in locating regulations before 1984, come to the Library's Reference Desk.

Citation Format
Rule 14.2 of the Bluebook sets forth the proper form for citing to the Federal Register. The following is an example of a citation to the Federal Register:

66 Fed. Reg. 12,877 (2001) (to be codified at 47 C.F.R. pt. 73).