Background
Every regulation in the CFR must have an "enabling statute", or statutory authority. The United States Code (U.S. Code) precedes the CFR and contains statutes enacted by Congress. The CFR contains regulations, which spell out in further detail how the executive branch will interpret the law. The two documents represent different stages in the legislative process. The U.S. Code is a codification of legislation, while the CFR serves as administrative law. Administrative law exists because the Congress often grants broad authority to executive branch agencies to interpret the statutes in the U.S. Code (and in uncodified statutes) which the agencies are entrusted with enforcing. Congress may be too busy, congested, or gridlocked to micromanage the jurisdiction of those agencies by writing statutes that cover every possible detail, or Congress may determine that the technical specialists at the agency are best equipped to develop detailed applications of statutes to particular fact patterns as they arise.
Under the Administrative Procedure Act, the agencies are permitted to promulgate detailed rules and regulations through a public "rulemaking" process where the public is allowed to comment, known as public information. After a period of time, the rules and regulations are usually published in the Federal Register.
The Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules in the index to the CFR correlates laws with their regulations using U.S. Code citations, Statutes at Large citations, and Public Law numbers.
The code was started in 1938.
Read more about this topic: Code Of Federal Regulations
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)