Legal Research in The United States - Executive Branch Sources (Regulations)

Executive Branch Sources (Regulations)

A legislature usually has neither the time nor the expertise to administer all of the details of a particular statute. It may, for example, pass a statute mandating clean water. However, it delegates the authority to actually implement the statute to a Government agency, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Agencies issue administrative Regulations to implement the details of the "enabling legislation" that gave the agency authority to act.

The challenge with the executive branch is to track down the rules and regulations of federal and state administrative agencies. Luckily administrative regulations have a "life cycle" that is very similar to that of statutes. Regulations start out as an agency document, which many agencies now post on the web. Similar to statutes, regulations are often published in chronological order in registers, and finally are published in subject order in codes.

Federal regulations, for example, are first printed in the Federal Register, before they are published in subject order in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Because of this "publication pattern" in order to find out if there has been a change with respect to a particular regulation a print CFR user has to go through a two step process of checking 1) the List of Sections Affected (LSA) and 2) the latest issue of the Federal Register for the current month. The United States Government Printing Office has an e-CFR pilot project is underway to provide a version of the CFR without having to refer to a separate publication for updates.

The foremost executive branch entity is, of course, the Office of President of the United States. The White House has its own website. Presidential documents are published in the Federal Register and in Title 3 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Presidential documents can also be accessed in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents and the Public Papers of the Presidents available in print and at the United States Government Printing Office website.

The relationship between statutes and regulations means that one can usually never consider just a regulation alone. This intertwined grouping of regulations, statutes, and cases is often best deciphered using secondary sources such as books and journal articles.