This is a chronological, but still incomplete, list of United States federal legislation. Congress has enacted approximately 200–600 statutes during each of its 112 biennial terms, so that more than 20,000 statutes have been enacted since 1789.
At the federal level in the United States, legislation (i.e., "statutes" or "statutory law") consists exclusively of Acts passed by the Congress of the United States and its predecessor, the Continental Congress, that were either signed into law by the President or passed by Congress after a presidential veto.
Legislation is not the only source of regulations with the force of law. However, most executive branch regulations must originate in a congressional grant of power. See also: Executive orders of the President; regulations of Executive branch departments and administrative agencies; and the procedural rules of the federal courts.
Read more about List Of United States Federal Legislation: Congress of The Confederation
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“My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“... the yearly expenses of the existing religious system ... exceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“When some one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the United States Army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Daniel as a lad bought a handkerchief on which the Federal Constitution was printed; it is said that at intervals while working in the meadows around this house, he would retire to the shade of the elms and study the Constitution from his handkerchief.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)