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Statute Compilations Update

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Nearly 300 Statute Compilations now available

GPO, in collaboration with the House Office of Legislative Counsel , Senate Office of Legislative Counsel, and the Clerk of the House, has worked to make nearly 300 Statute Compilations available on govinfo in PDF format.

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In October 2018, an initial set of 40 Compilations was made available and additional Compilations are being added over time. This collection of Statute Compilations is being made available in PDF format as an initial phase of a project with the ultimate goal to provide access to Compilations in United States Legislative Markup (USLM) XML format. Learn more about the USLM projects on GPO's GitHub account or in the December 2018 article announcing the first documents on govinfo in Beta USLM XML format.

What are Statute Compilations?

In coordination with the Senate Office of Legislative Counsel, the House Office of Legislative Counsel maintains a corpus of Statute Compilations of public laws that either do not appear in the U.S. Code or that have been classified to a title of the U.S. Code that has not been enacted into positive law. Each Statute Compilation incorporates the amendments made to the underlying statute since it was originally enacted.

When legislation cites or amends a statutory provision that is not part of a positive law title of the U.S. Code, the citation or amendment must be to the underlying statute, not to the U.S. Code. Statute Compilations are a useful drafting aid in these circumstances.

Unofficial documents: These compilations of public laws, as amended, are unofficial documents and should not be cited as legal evidence of the law. While these publications do not represent an official version of any Federal statute, substantial efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of its contents. The official version of Federal law is found in the United States Statutes at Large and in the United States Code. The legal effect to be given to the Statutes at Large and the United States Code is established by statute (1 U.S.C. 112, 204).

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