United States legal code section
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Title 1 of the United States Code outlines the general provisions of the United States Code. [1]
| This article is part of a series on the |
| United States Code |
|---|
| |
| United Statesportal |
Title 1 of the United States Code outlines the general provisions of the United States Code. [1]
Chapter 1: Rules of Construction
Chapter 2: Acts and Resolutions; Formalities of Enactment; Repeals; Sealing of Instruments
Title I was originally passed by the 80th Congress in 1947, along with titles 3, 4, 6, 9, & 17. [3] Chapter 1 was influenced [4] by the "Dictionary Act" [5] passed in the 41st Congress.
In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. It contains 53 titles. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The official version of these laws appears in the United States Statutes at Large, a chronological, uncodified compilation.
An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities, or to the general public. For a bill to become an act, the text must pass through both houses with a majority, then be either signed into law by the president of the United States, be left unsigned for ten days while Congress remains in session, or, if vetoed by the president, receive a congressional override from 2⁄3 of both houses.
The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.
Sodomy laws in the United States, which outlawed a variety of sexual acts, were inherited from colonial laws in the 17th century. While they often targeted sexual acts between persons of the same sex, many statutes employed definitions broad enough to outlaw certain sexual acts between persons of different sexes, in some cases even including acts between married persons.
Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, addresses the duty that states within the United States have to respect the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." According to the Supreme Court, there is a difference between the credit owed to laws as compared to the credit owed to judgments. Judges and lawyers agree on the meaning of the clause with respect to the recognition of judgments rendered by one state in the courts of another. Barring exceptional circumstances, one state must enforce a judgment by a court in another, unless that court lacked jurisdiction, even if the enforcing court otherwise disagrees with the result. At present, it is widely agreed that this Clause of the Constitution has a minimal impact on a court's choice of law decision provided that no state’s sovereignty is infringed, although this Clause of the Constitution was once interpreted to have greater impact.
In the United States Congress, a joint resolution is a legislative measure that requires passage by the Senate and the House of Representatives and is presented to the President for their approval or disapproval. Generally, there is no legal difference between a joint resolution and a bill. Both must be passed, in exactly the same form, by both chambers of Congress, and signed by the President to become a law. Only joint resolutions may be used to propose amendments to the United States Constitution and these do not require the approval of the President. Laws enacted by joint resolutions are not distinguished from laws enacted by bills, except that they are designated as resolutions as opposed to Acts of Congress.
A repeal is the removal or reversal of a law. There are two basic types of repeal; a repeal with a re-enactment is used to replace the law with an updated, amended, or otherwise related law, or a repeal without replacement so as to abolish its provisions altogether.
In certain jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and other Westminster-influenced jurisdictions, as well as the United States and the Philippines, primary legislation has both a short title and a long title.
The Internal Revenue Code (IRC), formally the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, is the domestic portion of federal statutory tax law in the United States, published in various volumes of the United States Statutes at Large, and separately as Title 26 of the United States Code (USC). It is organized topically, into subtitles and sections, covering income tax in the United States, payroll taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes, and excise taxes; as well as procedure and administration. The Code's implementing federal agency is the Internal Revenue Service.
The United States Statutes at Large, commonly referred to as the Statutes at Large and abbreviated Stat., are an official record of Acts of Congress and concurrent resolutions passed by the United States Congress. Each act and resolution of Congress is originally published as a slip law, which is classified as either public law or private law (Pvt.L.), and designated and numbered accordingly. At the end of a Congressional session, the statutes enacted during that session are compiled into bound books, known as "session law" publications. The session law publication for U.S. Federal statutes is called the United States Statutes at Large. In that publication, the public laws and private laws are numbered and organized in chronological order. U.S. Federal statutes are published in a three-part process, consisting of slip laws, session laws, and codification.
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure are the procedural rules that govern how federal criminal prosecutions are conducted in United States district courts and the general trial courts of the U.S. government. They are the companion to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The admissibility and use of evidence in criminal proceedings is governed by the separate Federal Rules of Evidence.
The Code of Virginia is the statutory law of the U.S. state of Virginia, and consists of the codified legislation of the Virginia General Assembly. The 1950 Code of Virginia is the revision currently in force. The previous official versions were the Codes of 1819, 1849, 1887, and 1919, though other compilations had been printed privately as early as 1733, and other editions have been issued that were not designated full revisions of the code.
A rape shield law is a law that limits the ability to introduce evidence or cross-examine rape complainants about their past sexual behaviour. The term also refers to a law that prohibits the publication of the identity of an alleged rape victim.
The Revised Statutes of the United States was the first official codification of the Acts of Congress. It was enacted into law in 1874. The purpose of the Revised Statutes was to make it easier to research federal law without needing to consult the individual Acts of Congress published in the United States Statutes at Large.
In the law of the United States, federal preemption is the invalidation of a U.S. state law that conflicts with federal law.
United States v. More, 7 U.S. 159 (1805), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that it had no jurisdiction to hear appeals from criminal cases in the circuit courts by writs of error. Relying on the Exceptions Clause, More held that Congress's enumerated grants of appellate jurisdiction to the Court operated as an exercise of Congress's power to eliminate all other forms of appellate jurisdiction.
The Crimes Act of 1790, formally titled An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, defined some of the first federal crimes in the United States and expanded on the criminal procedure provisions of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Crimes Act was a "comprehensive statute defining an impressive variety of federal crimes".
Title 52 of the United States Code, entitled "Voting and Elections", is a codification of the "general and permanent" voting and election laws of the United States federal government. It was adopted as a result of "editorial reclassification" efforts of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives and was not enacted as positive law.
The Code of the District of Columbia is the codification of the general and permanent laws relating to the District of Columbia. It was enacted and is revised by authority of the Congress of the United States.