Talk Elections

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/

Is every federal law in the United States Code?

No.

If you want every Federal Law, you have to go to the United States Statutes at Large.  However,  those laws that act on a continuing basis of general interest are classified to the United States Code.  So budget bills, laws that tell the executive to name some federal building after someone, etc., don't get put in the code.

There is also the Code of Federal Regulations, the Harmonized Tarriff Schedule, and the Treaties and Other International Acts Series.

Thanks. :) But any Act of significance is generally going to be an amendment to the United States Code, correct?

Depends on the law.  Some portions of the Code are what are known as positive law and so amendments to those portions of the law are made by directly citing the relevant code. Others aren't so it gets more complicated for those because then the US Code only serves as an index into the real law and so to amend those would require amending the underlying Statute at Law, not the US Code directly.  Generally, the amending law tries to be helpful and assign a suggested position in the US Code in such cases, but it isn't an absolute requirement.

So is statute amended or is new statute added?

It all depends on what the law is trying to do and where it would go in the code.  In theory, they could even create new titles, but except for merging Title 34, Navy with Title 10, Army and Air Force to form Title 10, Armed Forces in 1956, they've stuck with the 50 titles established when the United States Code was first published in 1926.

 U. S. Statutes at Large (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsl.html).

All of that's from the 1800s. What about modern statutes?

U. S. Statutes at Large (http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/publications/statutes.html)

Finally found a site that has all of the old Statutes at Law

http://constitution.org/uslaw/sal/sal.htm (http://constitution.org/uslaw/sal/sal.htm)

The other two links provide no coverage for 1876-1950, this one covers up till early 2013.

I'm afraid not.

out of curiosity, how are old statutes treated? If an 1840 statute was on the books, do judges still treat that as existing law or do we hold they are not necessarily applicable? (Even though, de jure, they do?)

I've been fascinated at how the legal system treats the old outdated laws that no longer really operate. I know that sodomy was technically on the South's books but they were considered antiquated law by the early 2000s.

Hmmm I wonder what the oldest statute is

Is every federal law in the United States Code?
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Yes, they are. With one MAJOR caveat, which is the intersection of the Legislative and Administrative branches of Government.  This is where the US code, intersects with the Code of Federal Regulations, Administrative rulings, and Letters of Opinion.

The Tax code is probably the easiest to understand; in that the Federal Statutes are pretty simply to understand, but when you add just the Letters of Opinion -- you enter the Twilight Zone.  This is because anyone can write a letter to an Administrative Agency and ask if their interpretation of a Statute, or Administrative Rule is permissible.  

Basically, the application of a good majority of statutes are subjective rather than objective in nature.

Cheers

The very first act passed by Congress under the Constitution, concerning the administration of oaths of office for various offices, is still on the books, codified in the U.S. Code in various places depending upon the office. I doubt if any statues are on the books from the Confederation, tho I suppose it would be possible for a land title case in the old Northwest or Southwest Territories to make use of such an old law.

The supposed reason that Texas can't secede is because the AOC created a perpetual Union and the Constitution made it a more perfect Union.

This is an interesting question that hasn't been touched upon much, mostly because of the Congress of the Confederation's failure to do anything. However, I think that laws passed under the Confederation would continue to have effect unless repealed under the Constitutional government. I was able to find a paper some time ago discussing the Resolutions passed by the Confederate Congress. I believe there were only 25 in total. In the morning I'll try to find it and post it here.

Just bumped into this thread again and realized that I never posted the link I mentioned in my last post. I'm pretty sure this was it: https://www.jstor.org/stable/846083

It covers "Ordinances" in particular, and not "Resolutions" of the Conrgess of the Confederation.