CODE OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS
The NEW DEAL program of legislation enacted during the administration of President FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT established a large number of new federal agencies, which generated a shapeless and confusing mass of new regulations. There was no one place for a person affected by the regulations to examine them until 1935 when Congress created the FEDERAL REGISTER, a daily publication of the rules and federal documents produced by the EXECUTIVE BRANCH of the federal government and by the agencies. By 1937 this chronological compilation of regulations was effective in informing the public of new regulations, but it did not help a researcher who wanted to locate a regulation promulgated earlier. A publication that organized the regulations by subject was needed.
To meet this need, Congress created the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) as a more permanent and better organized source of federal regulations.
The original methods employed in compiling
the code are still used. Documents are
selected from the Federal Register and arranged
in a scheme of fifty titles, some of which are the
same as the titles used to organize federal
statutes in the U.S. Code. Each title is divided
into chapters, parts, and sections. A particular
provision can be cited by reference, first to the
title and then to the section where it is found.
For example, standards promulgated by the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
to promote safe workplaces are cited as 29 C.F.R.
1910. This means that they are found in Part
1910 of Title 29 in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Title 29 contains regulations relating to
labor.
The Code of Federal Regulations is kept upto-
date by a complete revision each year. New
pamphlets are issued containing all the regulations
in force at the time of publication. Onefourth
of the pamphlets are revised at the end of
each quarter of the year. For example, revisions
of Titles 1 to 16 are issued as of January 1. Each
volume contains a list of sections that have been
affected by changes since January 1, 1964. There
is a separate list covering changes made between
1949 and 1964. Revised pamphlets, however, do
not cover changes that were made and then discarded
or modified again during the year.
To facilitate research, one volume of the
C.F.R. contains both a general index and a finding
aid. A general index helps researchers find
regulations by looking up the name of the
agency issuing them or the subject covered by
them. The finding aid helps a researcher convert
information from one source of law to a parallel
reference in the Code of Federal Regulations. It
shows how to locate a regulation in the C.F.R.
after discovering a reference to it in the U.S.
Code.
It is necessary to have the Code of Federal
Regulations to use along with the daily issues of
the Federal Register because the Federal Register
announces changes in federal regulations by listing
them according to the parts in the C.F.R. that
are affected.
