4 USC § 42 - Same; custody and use of

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Current through Pub. L. 112-131. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

The Secretary of State shall have the custody and charge of such seal. Except as provided by section 2902 (a) of title 5, the seal shall not be affixed to any instrument without the special warrant of the President therefor.

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Source

(July 30, 1947, ch. 389, 61 Stat. 643; Pub. L. 89–554, § 2(a),Sept. 6, 1966, 80 Stat. 608.)

Amendments

1966—Pub. L. 89–554struck out provisions which required the Secretary of State to make out and record, and to affix the seal to, all civil commissions for officers of the United States appointed by the President. See section 2902 (a) of Title 5, Government Organization and Employees.

Ex. Ord. No. 10347. Affixing of Seal Without Special Warrant

Ex. Ord. No. 10347, Apr. 18, 1952, 17 F.R. 3521, as amended by Ex. Ord. No. 11354, May 23, 1967, 32 F.R. 7695; Ex. Ord. No. 11517, Mar. 19, 1970, 35 F.R. 4937, provided:

By virtue of the authority vested in me by section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code (section 10, Public Law 248, approved October 31, 1951, 65 Stat. 713), and as President of the United States, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States, pursuant to section 42 of title 4 of the United States Code [this section], without any special warrant therefor, other than this order, to each document included within any of the following classes of documents when such document has been signed by the President and, in the case of any such document to which the counter-signature of the Secretary of State is required to be affixed, has been counter-signed by the said Secretary:

1. Proclamations by the President of treaties, conventions, protocols, or other international agreements.

2. Instruments of ratification of treaties.

3. Full powers to negotiate treaties and to exchange ratifications.

4. Letters of credence and recall and other communications from the President to heads of foreign governments.

5. Exequaturs issued to those foreign consular officers in the United States whose commissions bear the signature of the chief of state which they represent.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Wednesday, February 6, 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.

4 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large

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4 USC § 42 - Same; custody and use of

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