USA Law

United Stat­es Code with Annotations

United Stat­es Code with Annotations in the United States

There are two commercially published, unofficial codes. They are United States Code Service (often called “USCS”) and the United Stat­es Code Annotated (referred to as “USCA”).

Both are annotated with references to sources to help professionals of law (and students) understand and apply the statute. USCA is published by West and USCS is published by Lexis Nexis. They both reprint the text of the law and have the same kinds of extra content (called “annotations”). For most types of legal research, most researchers use only one set: either the USCA or the USCS. But, since the annotations differ between the USCS and USCA, ideally one should check both.

Therefore, unlike the official USC or free, unofficial versions of the USC online, the USCS and USCA are annotated, meaning they provide references to primary and secondary sources and cross-references to relevant statutes and regulations. Annotations include relevant court cases and federal agency decisions, expert commentary, cross references to the Code of Federal Regulations, and references to numerous treatises and law review articles.

The USCA also includes references to another West publication, US Code Congressional and Administrative News (USSCAN), which is primarily a resource for selective legislative history materials related to the enactment of a particular section of the Code.

The UNITED STATES CODE ANNOTED often provides a higher number of annotations to cases for a given statute; however, the UNITED STATES CODE SERVICE is more selective and may provide a longer annotation if the case is particularly relevant. Also, only the UNITED STATES CODE SERVICE provides citations to relevant administrative law decisions from courts and agencies. Note that the UNITED STATES CODE SERVICE will only contain references to treatises published by Lexis, while the UNITED STATES CODE ANNOTED only contains references to treatises published by West.

United States Code

All versions of the United States Code contain statutes. The code is arranged by subject. So, laws on similar topics are together. The official US Code is a much smaller set of books than either the USCA or USCS.

The code books are labeled with topics. These are the Titles of the code.

Main Sources: Lib Tour (http://libtour.classcaster.net/2011/03/23/united-states-code-annotated-usca-united-states-code-service-uscs) and Tarlton Law Library (http://tarltonguides.law.utexas.edu/legal-research-process).

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