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United States Code

The code of laws of the United States. Also known as the "U.S. Code," it contains 50 titles, each of which covers a subject area such as Agriculture, Labor, and Public, Health and Welfare. As each new law is passed, the relevant sections of the code are modified and updated, both in the printed codes and in the online databases.

There are three different publishers of the U.S. Code: the United States Government ("U.S.C."), West (United States Code Annotated, or U.S.C.A., which is available on Westlaw), and Lawyer's Coop (United States Code Service, or U.S.C.S, which is available on Lexis). Both commercial publishers update the unoffical versions of the Code more frequently than the government updates the official Code.

The complete text of the U.S. Code is available on several websites, including the U.S. House of Representatives and Cornell University Law School's Legal Information Institute.

For more information on the U.S. Code, please consult our statutory research tutorial.