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In this lesson, you will learn about state and federal laws, regulations, constitutions, and statutes.
Resources for Federal and State Statutes, Codes, and Rules
- Two levels of law
- Laws and more laws
- U.S. Constitution
- Sources for the U.S. Constitution
- Sources for federal statutes and codes
- Regulations: Administrative law
- Sources for federal regulations
- State constitutions
- Sources for state constitutions
- State statutes
- Sources for state statutes and codes
Transcript
This section will focus on state and federal laws. Federal laws include the U.S. constitution, federal codes, statutes, and federal regulations.
State laws include constitutions, codes, statutes, and rules, each of which serve their own purpose.
Many different names are used for laws, including statutes, codes, rules, regulations, and even constitutions.
Sometimes the names are used interchangeably, like statutes and codes. They and regulations are the same types of documents and tend to serve the same functions.
Constitutions are the principal rules or tenets of a government. No law can conflict with the U.S. constitution.
The best sources for the U.S. Constitution are governmental, including the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the U.S. Congress.
Federal statutes, as codified in the United States Code and the United States Code Annotated, are created by Congress through a formal process of lawmaking.
State laws are often derived from the United States code and customized to the needs of a particular state.
The U.S. code is available from a myriad sources, including the House of Representatives, U.S. government Publishing Office, and Cornell Law School.
In the federal system, administrative agencies make laws or rules to enforce their orders and decisions. Those laws are organized or codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. Agencies include the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), and others.
Like other federal laws, administrative rules and regulations can be found on university law sites, like University of Virginia library, University of Washington\’s Gallagher Law library, and federal government sites, like the Federal Register in the U.S. Government Publishing Office. As with the U.S. constitution, state constitutions are the basis for state laws. There is a constitution for each state, but the U.S. constitution rules. No state law or constitution can conflict with the U.S. constitution.
State constitutions tend to change more often than the U.S. constitution because of the flexibility states have to amend them.
Cornell Law School, the Maryland State\’s Constitution Project, and the Jerome Hall Law Library, Indiana University, are good sites to find state constitutions.
State laws stem from state legislators. Like federal laws, state laws might refer to statutes, codes, and rules simultaneously.
Oftentimes, rules, such as the Rules of Civil Procedure or the Rules of Evidence, are a part of the larger state codes or statutes.
Good sources for state laws include two commercial sites, Justia and FindLaw, and university sites like Cornell.