U.S.C. : Title 1 - GENERAL PROVISIONS | U.S. Code | LII / Legal Information Institute

USCPrelim is a preliminary release and may be subject to further revision before it is released again as a final version.

Current through Pub. L. 113-7. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

CHAPTER 1—RULES OF CONSTRUCTION (§§ 1–8)
CHAPTER 2—ACTS AND RESOLUTIONS; FORMALITIES OF ENACTMENT; REPEALS; SEALING OF INSTRUMENTS (§§ 101–114)
CHAPTER 3—CODE OF LAWS OF UNITED STATES AND SUPPLEMENTS; DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CODE AND SUPPLEMENTS (§§ 201–213)

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CHAPTER 1—RULES OF CONSTRUCTION (§§ 1–8)
CHAPTER 2—ACTS AND RESOLUTIONS; FORMALITIES OF ENACTMENT; REPEALS; SEALING OF INSTRUMENTS (§§ 101–114)
CHAPTER 3—CODE OF LAWS OF UNITED STATES AND SUPPLEMENTS; DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CODE AND SUPPLEMENTS (§§ 201–213)

This title was enacted by act July 30, 1947, ch. 388, § 1,61 Stat. 633 Chap. Sec. 1. Rules of construction 1 2. Acts and resolutions; formalities of enactment; repeals; sealing of instruments 101 3. Code of Laws of United States and Supplements; District of Columbia Code and Supplements 201

Positive Law; Citation

This title has been made positive law by section 1 of act July 30, 1947, ch. 388, 61 Stat. 633, which provided in part that: “Title 1 of the United States Code entitled ‘General Provisions’, is codified and enacted into positive law and may be cited as ‘1 U. S. C., § ——.’ ”

Repeals

Section 2 of act July 30, 1947, provided that the sections or parts thereof of the Statutes at Large or the Revised Statutes covering provisions codified in this Act are repealed insofar as the provisions appeared in former Title 1, and provided that any rights or liabilities now existing under the repealed sections or parts thereof shall not be affected by the repeal.

Writs of Error

Section 23 of act June 25, 1948, ch. 646, 62 Stat. 990, provided that: “All Acts of Congress referring to writs of error shall be construed as amended to the extent necessary to substitute appeal for writ of error.”

Table Showing Disposition of All Sections of Former Title 1
Title 1 Former Sections	Revised Statutes Statutes at Large	Title 1 New Sections
1	R.S., § 1	1
2	R.S., § 2	2
3	R.S., § 3	3
4	R.S., § 4	4
5	R.S., § 5	5
6	June 11, 1940, ch. 325, § 1, 54 Stat. 305	6
21	R.S., § 7	101
22	R.S., § 8	102
23	R.S., § 9	103
24	R.S., § 10	104
25	R.S., § 11	105
26	Nov. 1, 1893, 28 Stat. App. 5	106
	Mar. 2, 1895, ch. 177, § 1, 28 Stat. 769.
27	Mar. 6, 1920, ch. 94, § 1, 41 Stat. 520	107
28	R.S., § 12	108
29	R.S., § 13	109
	Mar. 22, 1944, ch. 123, 58 Stat. 118.
29a	R.S., § 5599	110
29b	Mar. 3, 1933, ch. 202, § 3, 47 Stat. 1431	111
30	Jan. 12, 1895, ch. 23, § 73, 28 Stat. 615	112
	June 20, 1936, ch. 630, § 9, 49 Stat. 1551.
	June 16, 1938, ch. 477, § 1, 52 Stat. 760.
30a	R.S., § 908	113
31	R.S., § 6	114
51a	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 1, 45 Stat. 1540	201
52	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 2, 45 Stat. 1007	202
	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 2, 45 Stat. 1541.
53	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 3, 45 Stat. 1007	203
54	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 4, 45 Stat. 1007	204
	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 3, 45 Stat. 1541.
54a	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 4, 45 Stat. 1542	205
	Mar. 4, 1933, ch. 282, § 1, 47 Stat. 1603.
	June 13, 1934, ch. 483, §§ 1, 2, 48 Stat. 948.
54b	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 5, 45 Stat. 1542	206
	Mar. 4, 1933, ch. 282, § 1, 47 Stat. 1603.
	June 13, 1934, ch. 483, §§ 1, 2, 48 Stat. 948.
54c	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 6, 45 Stat. 1542	207
54d	Mar. 2, 1929, ch. 586, § 7, 45 Stat. 1542	208
55	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 5, 45 Stat. 1007	209
56	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 6, 45 Stat. 1007	210
57	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 7, 45 Stat. 1008	211
58	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 8, 45 Stat. 1008	212
59	May 29, 1928, ch. 910, § 10, 45 Stat. 1008	213
60	Mar. 3, 1933, ch. 202, § 2, 47 Stat. 1431	Rep.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for the contained sections. If there are multiple sections, they are presented in section number order (original document order).

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Tuesday, April 16, 2013

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

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General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

New Sections for this Title

1 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large
§ 1	nt new	2013	113-6 [Sec.] 3	127 Stat. 199
§ 1		2012	112-231 [Sec.] 2(a)	126 Stat. 1619
§ 1	nt new	2012	112-231 [Sec.] 1	126 Stat. 1619

U.S.C. : Title 1 - GENERAL PROVISIONS

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