Table of Contents
About Public and Private Laws
What are Public and Private Laws?
Public and private laws are also known as slip laws. A slip is an official publication of law and “competent evidence”, admissible in all state and federal courts and tribunals of the United States (1 U.S.C. 113).
Most laws passed by Congress are public laws. Public laws affect society as a whole. Citations of public laws include the abbreviation, Pub.L., Congress number (such as 107), and the number of the statute. For example: Pub.L. 107-006.
Private laws affect an individual, family, or small group, and are enacted to assist citizens who have been injured by government programs or who are appealing an executive agency decision such as deportation. Citations for private laws include the abbreviation, Private L, Congress number (such as 107), and the number of the statute. For example: Pvt. 107-006.
After the president signs a bill into law, it is delivered to the Federal Register (OFR), the Office of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where it is assigned a law number, a legal statutory citation (public law only). is, and is prepared for publication in the form of slip law. Private laws receive their legal statutory citations when they are published extensively in the United States.
Before publication as slip law, the OFR prepares marginal notes and citations for each law and a legislative history for public laws only. Until the publication of the slip law, the U.S. Through the Government Publications Office (GPO), the text of the law can be found by accessing the enrolled version of the bill.
What’s Available?
- Public and private legislation in the 104th Congress is available at govinfo.
- At the end of each session of Congress, slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called mass statutes, and are known as “session laws”. Large-scale statutes present a chronological arrangement of laws in the exact order in which they are enacted.
- Every six years, public laws are incorporated into the United States Code, a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. A supplement to the United States Code is published during each interim year until the next comprehensive volume is published. US The code is organized by subject matter, and it reflects the current state of laws, with amendments already included in the text that have been amended on one or more occasions. It is maintained as a separate collection.
Public and Private Laws Side Notes
The Office of the Federal Register (OFR) prepares each law for publication as a slip of law (an individual pamphlet print) and then compiles, indexes and publishes them extensively in the laws of the United States (of each A permanent bound volume of laws for the Congress session).
Slip laws are presented exactly as they appear in the official printed version. Therefore, all side notes appear on the margins in their original form. Side notes are displayed in different ways in text and PDF files.
Headers or side notes in public and private laws contain the following information:
- Public law number
- Date of enactment
- Bill number
- Popular name of the law
- Statutes at Large citation
- U.S. Code citation
- Legislative history (Public laws only)
Text: Side notes appear in double angle brackets within the body of the text. For example: in the printed version of Public Law 106-1 and in the ASCII text file, “To restore the management and personnel authority of the Mayor of the District of Columbia,” abbreviated as “<>” immediately after a clause that begins with “May this be enacted”. Example
PDF: Side notes appear exactly as those changes appear in the printed version. For example: in the printed version of Public Law 106-1 and in the PDF file, “To restore the management and personnel authority of the Mayor of the District of Columbia,” abbreviated title (“District of Columbia Management Restoration Act of 1999”) “enacted Do” appears as a side note in the right margin adjacent to the section. Example
Searching Public and Private Laws
You can search and find public and private laws by:
- using basic search for searches performed by keywords and metadata fields (see Metadata fields and values section),
- Using the Advanced Search field specific to laws will display after you select Public and Private Laws in the Refine by Collection column,
- Using Citation Search to get a single bill in PDF format, if you know the law type, congress number and law number,
- Refining search results by clicking links in your search panel on the left side of the page (the sections under Refining your searches correspond to available metadata for documents), and
- Browse the browsing page on Public and Private Laws
Public and Private Laws Metadata Fields and Values
Some of these metadata fields are made available for use in Advanced Search. The metadata values can be entered in the same format for the fields available on the Advanced Search Page. Using Advanced Search
| Metadata Field Display Name | Metadata Field Definition | Field Operator | Field Operator Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collection | The collection to which the document belongs. Typically the same as the publication or series. | collection: | collection:plaw”plaw” is used for Public and Private Laws |
| Government Author | The names of the Government organizations responsible for authoring or assembling the document. | governmentauthor: | governmentauthor:”national archives and records administration” |
| Publication Date | The date the document was first made available to the public. | publishdate: | publishdate:2006-09-30Date format is YYYY-MM-DD |
| Language | The language code of the original document, from the ISO639-2b standard. | language: | language:eng |
| Former Package ID | The document ID of the “package” as originally specified on www.gpoaccess.gov. | mods:identifier:(@type:”former package identifier”:______) | mods:identifier:(@type:”former package identifier”:”f:publ101.104″) |
| Ingestion Date | The date the document was ingested into the preservation repository. | ingestdate: | ingestdate:2010-12-29Date format is YYYY-MM-DD |
| Electronic Location (URL) | The URL where the document or the document in context (the content detail page) is located. | url: | url:”http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ347/pdf/PLAW-108publ347.pdf“ |
| Publisher | The government organization who publishes the document or publication. Not typically the Government Publishing Office (who serves as the printer and distributor), except in the case of Congressional publications. | publisher: | publisher:”u.s. government printing office” |
| Branch | The branch of Government responsible for the document’s contents. | branch: | branch:legislativePossible Values: executive, legislative, judicial |
| Type of Resource | The media type for the document, typically “text”. Defined as part of the Library of Congress MODS standard. | typeofresource: | typeofresource:text |
| WAIS Database Name | The name of the WAIS database to which the document belonged in the former GPO Access system. | waisdbname: | waisdbname:108_cong_public_laws |
| Record Origin | How the record was originally generated. Typically “machine generated.” | recordorigin: | recordorigin:”machine generated” |
| Title | The title of the publication. | title: | title:”national defense authorization act” |
| Congress Number | The number of the Congress responsible for the law. | congress: | congress:108 |
| Law Type | Each document will be either a Public law or a Private law | lawtype: | lawtype:publicPossible Values: public, private |
| Law Number | Number for the law. Laws are numbered sequentially per Congress. | docnumber: | docnumber:318 |
| Is Appropriation | Flag indicates that a law includes the words to make appropriations, making appropriations, making emergency supplemental appropriations, making further continuing appropriations, making continuing appropriations, or to authorize appropriations in its full title. | isappropriation: | isappropriation:truePossible values: true, false |
| Date Approved | The date the law was approved. | approveddate: | approveddate:2006-09-30Date format is YYYY-MM-DD |
| Legislative History | Complete textual section of the legislative history printed at the bottom of the law. | mods:legislativeHistory: | mods:legislativeHistory:”natural resources” |
| Committee | Congressional committee names listed in the legislative history of public laws. | committee: | committee:science |
| Citation | The GPO standard method for searching citation references from the selected publication. | citation: | citation:”public law 107-314″ |
| Bill Number | Reference to a bill number within the text of the document or the bill number for bills associated with the law. | billscitation: | billscitation:”h.r. 4516″ |
| Congressional Report Citation | Reference to a congressional report within the text of the document. | crptcitation: | crptcitation:108-330crptcitation:”H. Rept. 114-669″ |
| United States CodeCitations | Reference to a United States Code citation within the text of the document. This citation may only include the United States Code Title and Section, chapter, or appendix numbers. | uscodecitation: | uscodecitation:”43 u.s.c. 1337″uscodecitation:”3 U.S.C. 1337(g)”uscodecitation:”50 U.S.C. App. 2078″ |
| Statutes at LargeCitation | Reference to a Statutes at Large citation within the text of the document. | statutecitation: | statutecitation:”11 Stat. 401″ |
| Reference Citation | Reference to another document within the text of a document. | refcitation: | refcitation:”h.r. 1″ |
