This guide will identify how to find federal statutory and regulatory sources that are available on the World Wide Web.

Thomas at the Library of Congress

Thomas is a legislative database maintained by the Library of Congress which contains the full text of public laws from the 93rd Congress (1973-1974) to date as well as links to the online full-text version of selected legislative history documents. These include the full text of congressional bills from the 101st Congress (1989-1990), committee reports from the 104th Congress (1995-1996), and the debates and proceedings from the Congressional Record from the 101st Congress (1989-1990) to date.

United States Code through Cornell

This site, maintained by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, contains the full text of the U.S. Code with direct links to updates from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel in the House of Representatives. Direct links are also provided to the full text of public laws via the Thomas database at the Library of Congress, thus providing an efficient, seamless means of updating the text of code sections. Links are also provided to CFR sections that have been promulgated under a particular code section.

United States Code at the Office of the Law Revision Counsel

This site, maintained by the House of Representatives, contains the full text of the US Code with citations to updates from the Office of Law Revision Counsel. Additional links are also provided to the full text of public laws via Thomas. The code can be searched by title and section number, keyword, or both cite and keyword. This site also contains the US Code Classification Tables that allow users to check for updates to the code by public law number or code citation.

Federal Register at GPO Access

The full text of the Federal Register is available at this site, a joint project of the Office of the Federal Register and the Government Printing Office. This database contains the full text of proposed and final rules and regulations as well as Presidential documents and notices from 1995 to date. The Federal Register is searchable by keyword and citation and searches can be limited by date, type of document or fields within a document, e.g. abstracts or titles.

Code of Federal Regulations at GPO Access

The full text of the Code of Federal Regulations is available at this site, a joint project of the Office of the Federal Register and the Government Printing Office. The CFR is searchable by keyword or citation. Users can also browse CFR titles and/or volumes (1996-current). There is also a link to the LSA (List of CFR Sections Affected) for changes or updates to CFR sections.

Code of Federal Regulations through Cornell

This site, maintained by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, provides an alternative search interface for the Code of Federal Regulations database at GPO. The full text of the CFR is searchable by citations and the CFR code section headings are searchable by keyword.