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Understanding Federal Legal
Citations
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| A legal citation is a set of letters and numbers
that describes how to locate a statute, regulation or rule. Below
is abrief explanation of the conventions used in citing federal and state
statutes, rules and regulations. |
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| Federal Statutes |
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| All federal statutes are called public
laws, abbreviated as PL. Statutes are first introduced
into Congress as bills. The first number of the public law identifies
the Congres that enacted the bill.. The second number identifies
the order in which the bill was enacted. For instance: P.L.
94-142 means that this law (the Education For All Handicapped Act)
was the 142nd Public Law enacted by the 94th Congress. |
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| P.L. 94-142 is the Federal special
education law that guarantees a free, appropriate public education to persons
with handicaps. It is found with other federal statutes in the United
States Code (USC) Ther correct legal citation for P.L.
94-142 si 20 USC 1401 et seq. Et seq means
"and subsequent sections" P.L. 94-142 is in Title 20, the
eduation title. 1401 is the first section of P.L. 94-142
That is: 20 USC 1401 et. seq means that
Title 20, Untited States Code, Section 1401 and subsequent sections |
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| Federal Regulations |
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| Federal regulations are compiled in the Code
of Federal Regulations (CFR). P.L. 94-142 is found in Ttitle 34 of
the CFR. P.L. 142 regulations begin at Section 301.1 et. seq.
Recent changes in federal regulations are reported daily in the Federal
Register; these regulations are abbreviated with FR in the citation.
For instance 34 CFR 301.1 means: Title 34 Code of Federal
Regulations, and the number 301.1 is the section where P.L. 94-142 regulations
begin |
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| Code
of Federal Regulations -- url: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-search.html |
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Disabilityclaims.com
-- Created as a resource for disability legal issues it attempts to address
the legal concerns of disabled individuals.It also provides many common
sense do’s and don’ts in the disability benefit application process.
Telephone:
212-297-0700; Fax: 212-297-0730 -
email: http://www.disabilityclaims.com/ - url: riemer@tiac.net |
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Federal,
State & Local Courts --
url: http://www.nolo.com: |
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GovBot -- A
search engine that searches ONLY in government databases. Outstanding
for tracing ADA legislation, court decisions and regulations, exceptions,
"reasonable accommodations"
url: http://ciir2.cs.umass.edu/Govbot/ |
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| TBI legislation, and the TBI Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-266)
(HR 248) may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov.
It's the web site for Congress including the Congressional Budget
Office and General Accounting Office, etc. It was named after Thomas
Jefferson. The "loc" stands for Library of Congress, so there's
a lot of good stuff available on it. Pulling down the Committee Report
to the Act (from the 104th Congress) is useful for gaining insights into
Congress' intentions for the law. |
206-621-8558
