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Legal Research for Beginners

This guide is an accompaniment to the webinar: Legal Research for Beginners by Ellyssa Valenti Kroski presented to the American Library Association in May 2024.

Regulations

Regulations - Rules which are enacted by agencies to create procedures that enforce the authority of statutes. Congress grants the authority to regulate an area of law by statute. The statute empowering the regulation is printed at the beginning of its entry in the Code of Regulations.  For example:

  • The Federal Reserve System - "the Fed" is an agency which manages the nation's monetary policy, sets the interest rates, promotes financial stability, rescues banks, issues emergency lending, etc.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an agency which regulates environmental pollution within the United States.

How do these work?

  • Proposed regulations must be published in the Federal Register.These proposals contain a preamble summary stating the intent and purpose of the regulation. https://www.federalregister.gov
  • Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)– Enacted Federal regulations are listed in the CFR which includes all the regulations created by federal agencies, however they don’t contain the preambles. They are divided into 50 subjects or Titles and then subdivided by agency. https://www.ecfr.gov
  • State regulations may be found on the state’s website and may be called the state’s Administrative Code or Code of Regulations.
  • Agencies each have their own websites.
  • USA.gov - A-Z index of U.S. government departments and agencies, contains contact information and websites for US federal government departments and agencies. https://www.usa.gov/agency-index

HINT: The easiest way to find regulations related to statutes is to go to one of the major platforms such as Westlaw or Lexis and look at the annotated entry for the statute which will likely lead to cases, regulations, etc.

Example Regulations

To illustrate a typical regulation, it's helpful to see what they look like.  Here I've looked up the regulation for what the product "Turkey Ham" must consist of according the USDA agency.

First is the regulation accessed through the ecfr website and the second, the pdf available on the Federal Register available via govinfo.

Riveting.

 

 

 

 

https://www.ecfr.gov/

 

 

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/FR/