Code of Federal Regulations

The NEW DEAL program of legislation enacted during the administration of President FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT established a large number of new federal agencies, which generated a shapeless and confusing mass of new regulations. There was no one place for a person affected by the regulations to examine them until 1935 when Congress created the FEDERAL REGISTER, a daily publication of the rules and federal documents produced by the EXECUTIVE BRANCH of the federal government and by the agencies. By 1937 this chronological compilation of regulations was effective in informing the public of new regulations, but it did not help a researcher who wanted to locate a regulation promulgated earlier. A publication that organized the regulations by subject was needed.

To meet this need, Congress created the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) as a more permanent and better organized source of federal regulations.

The original methods employed in compiling the code are still used. Documents are selected from the Federal Register and arranged in a scheme of fifty titles, some of which are the same as the titles used to organize federal statutes in the U.S. Code. Each title is divided into chapters, parts, and sections. A particular provision can be cited by reference, first to the title and then to the section where it is found. For example, standards promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promote safe workplaces are cited as 29 C.F.R. 1910. This means that they are found in Part 1910 of Title 29 in the Code of Federal Regulations. Title 29 contains regulations relating to labor.

The Code of Federal Regulations is kept upto-date by a complete revision each year. New pamphlets are issued containing all the regulations in force at the time of publication. One-fourth of the pamphlets are revised at the end of each quarter of the year. For example, revisions of Titles 1 to 16 are issued as of January 1. Each volume contains a list of sections that have been affected by changes since January 1, 1964. There is a separate list covering changes made between 1949 and 1964. Revised pamphlets, however, do not cover changes that were made and then discarded or modified again during the year.

To facilitate research, one volume of the C.F.R. contains both a general index and a finding aid. A general index helps researchers find regulations by looking up the name of the agency issuing them or the subject covered by them. The finding aid helps a researcher convert information from one source of law to a parallel reference in the Code of Federal Regulations. It shows how to locate a regulation in the C.F.R. after discovering a reference to it in the U.S. Code.

It is necessary to have the Code of Federal Regulations to use along with the daily issues of the Federal Register because the Federal Register announces changes in federal regulations by listing them according to the parts in the C.F.R. that are affected.