47 USC § 33 - Jurisdiction and venue of actions and offenses | Title 47 - Telegraphs, Telephones, and Radiotelegraphs | U.S. Code

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Current through Pub. L. 112-238. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction over all offenses against this chapter and of all suits of a civil nature arising thereunder, whether the infraction complained of shall have been committed within the territorial waters of the United States or on board a vessel of the United States outside of said waters. From the decrees and judgments of the district courts in actions and suits arising under this chapter appeals shall be allowed as provided by law in other cases. Criminal actions and proceedings for a violation of the provisions of this chapter shall be commenced and prosecuted in the district court for the district within which the offense was committed, and when not committed within any judicial district, then in the district court for the district within which the offender may be found; and suits of a civil nature may be commenced in the district court for any district within which the defendant may be found and shall be served with process.

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The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction over all offenses against this chapter and of all suits of a civil nature arising thereunder, whether the infraction complained of shall have been committed within the territorial waters of the United States or on board a vessel of the United States outside of said waters. From the decrees and judgments of the district courts in actions and suits arising under this chapter appeals shall be allowed as provided by law in other cases. Criminal actions and proceedings for a violation of the provisions of this chapter shall be commenced and prosecuted in the district court for the district within which the offense was committed, and when not committed within any judicial district, then in the district court for the district within which the offender may be found; and suits of a civil nature may be commenced in the district court for any district within which the defendant may be found and shall be served with process.

Source

(Feb. 29, 1888, ch. 17, § 13,25 Stat. 42; Jan. 31, 1928, ch. 14, § 1,45 Stat. 54.)

Codification

Words “and writs of error” after “appeals” deleted in view of section 1 of act Jan. 31, 1928, which abolished writs of error and provided for similar relief by appeal.

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.

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

47 USC § 33 - Jurisdiction and venue of actions and offenses

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