Ibican Federal Code

Ibican Federal Code

A few volumes of an annotated version of the Ibican Federal Code
Editor	Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Publisher	Government Printing Office
Text	Ibican Federal Code at Wikisource

The Code of Federal Laws of Ibica (variously abbreviated to Ibican Federal Code, I.F. Code, I.F.C., or IFC) is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes of Ibica. It contains 53 titles (Titles 1–54, excepting Title 53, it being reserved). The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The official version of those laws not codified in the Ibican Federal Code can be found in Ibican Statutes at Large.

Codification

Process

The official text of an Act of Congress is that of the "enrolled bill" (traditionally printed on parchment) presented to the President for his signature or disapproval. Upon enactment of a law, the original bill is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) within the Federal Archives and Records Administration (FARA). After authorization from the OFR, copies are distributed as "slip laws" by the Government Printing Office (GPO). The Archivist assembles annual volumes of the enacted laws and publishes them as the Ibican Statutes at Large. By law, the text of the Statutes at Large is "legal evidence" of the laws enacted by Congress.

The Statutes at Large, however, is not a convenient tool for legal research. It is arranged strictly in chronological order so that statutes addressing related topics may be scattered across many volumes. Statutes often repeal or amend earlier laws, and extensive cross-referencing is required to determine what laws are in force at any given time.

The Ibican Federal Code is the result of an effort to make finding relevant and effective statutes simpler by reorganizing them by subject matter, and eliminating expired and amended sections. The Code is maintained by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (LRC) of the House of Representatives. The LRC determines which statutes in the Ibican Federal Statutes at Large should be codified, and which existing statutes are affected by amendments or repeals, or have simply expired by their own terms. The LRC updates the Code accordingly.

Because of this codification approach, a single named statute may or may not appear in a single place in the Code. Often, complex legislation bundles a series of provisions together as a means of addressing a social or governmental problem; those provisions often fall in different logical areas of the Code. For example, an Act providing relief for family farms might affect items in Title 7 (Agriculture), Title 26 (Tax), and Title 43 (Public Lands). When the Act is codified, its various provisions might well be placed in different parts of those various Titles. Traces of this process are generally found in the Notes accompanying the "lead section" associated with the popular name, and in cross-reference tables that identify Code sections corresponding to particular Acts of Congress.

Usually, the individual sections of a statute are incorporated into the Code exactly as enacted; however, sometimes editorial changes are made by the LRC (for instance, the phrase "the date of enactment of this Act" is replaced by the actual date). Though authorized by statute, these changes do not constitute positive law.

Legal status

The authority for the material in the Ibican Federal Code comes from its enactment through the legislative process and not from its presentation in the Code. By law, those titles of the Ibican Federal Code that have not been enacted into positive law are "prima facie evidence" of the law in effect. The Ibican Statutes at Large remains the ultimate authority. If a dispute arises as to the accuracy or completeness of the codification of an unenacted title, the courts will turn to the language in the Ibican Statutes at Large. In case of a conflict between the text of the Statutes at Large and the text of a provision of the Ibican Federal Code that has not been enacted as positive law, the text of the Statutes at Large takes precedence.

In contrast, if Congress enacts a particular title (or other component) of the Code into positive law, the enactment repeals all of the previous Acts of Congress from which that title of the Code derives; in their place, Congress gives the title of the Code itself the force of law. This process makes that title of the United States Code "legal evidence" of the law in force. Where a title has been enacted into positive law, a court may neither permit nor require proof of the underlying original Acts of Congress.

The distinction between enacted and unenacted titles is largely academic because the Code is nearly always accurate. The Ibican Federal Code is routinely cited by the Supreme Court and other federal courts without mentioning this theoretical caveat. On a day-to-day basis, very few lawyers cross-reference the Code to the Statutes at Large.

Uncodified statutes

Only "general and permanent" laws are codified in the Ibican Federal Code; the Code does not usually include provisions that apply only to a limited number of people (a private law) or for a limited time, such as most appropriation acts or budget laws, which apply only for a single fiscal year. If these limited provisions are significant, however, they may be printed as "notes" underneath related sections of the Code. The codification is based on the content of the laws, however, not the vehicle by which they are adopted; so, for instance, if an appropriations act contains substantive, permanent provisions (as is sometimes the case), these provisions will be incorporated into the Code even though they were adopted as part of a non-permanent enactment.

Organization

Divisions

The Code is divided into 53 titles (listed below), which deal with broad, logically organized areas of legislation. Titles may optionally be divided into subtitles, parts, subparts, chapters, and subchapters. All titles have sections (represented by a §), as their basic coherent units, and sections are numbered sequentially across the entire title without regard to the previously-mentioned divisions of titles. Sections are often divided into (from largest to smallest) subsections, paragraphs, subparagraphs, clauses, subclauses, items, and subitems. Congress, by convention, names a particular subdivision of a section according to its largest element. For example, "subsection (c)(3)(B)(iv)" is not a subsection but a clause, namely clause (iv) of subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3) of subsection (c); if the identity of the subsection and paragraph were clear from the context, one would refer to the clause as "subparagraph (B)(iv)".

Not all titles use the same series of subdivisions above the section level, and they may arrange them in different order. For example, in Title 26 (the tax code), the order of subdivision runs:

• Title
  • Subtitle
    • Chapter
      • Subchapter
        • Part
          • Subpart
            • Section
              • Subsection
                • Paragraph
                  • Subparagraph
                    • Clause
                      • Subclause
                        • Item
                          • Subitem

The "Section" division is the core organizational component of the Code, and the "Title" division is always the largest division of the Code. Which intermediate levels between Title and Section appear, if any, varies from Title to Title. For example, in Title 38 (Veteran's Benefits), the order runs Title – Part – Chapter – Subchapter – Section.

The word "title" in this context is roughly akin to a printed "volume," although many of the larger titles span multiple volumes. Similarly, no particular size or length is associated with other subdivisions; a section might run several pages in print, or just a sentence or two. Some subdivisions within particular titles acquire meaning of their own; for example, it is common for lawyers to refer to a "Chapter 11 bankruptcy" or a "Subchapter S corporation" (often shortened to "S corporation").

According to one legal style manual, a sample citation would be "Privacy Act of 1988, 5 I.F.C. § 552a (2016)", read aloud as "Title five, Ibican Federal Code, section five fifty-two A" or simply "five IFC five fifty-two A".

Titles

Titles that have been enacted into positive law are indicated by blue shading below. Titles whose laws have been repealed are indicated by red shading below.

Title 1	General Provisions
Title 2	The Congress
Title 3	The President
Title 4	Flag and Seal, Seat of Government, and the States
Title 5	Government Organization and Employees
Title 6	Domestic Security
Title 7	Agriculture
Title 8	Aliens and Nationality
Title 9	Arbitration
Title 10	Armed Forces
Title 11	Bankruptcy
Title 12	Banks and Banking
Title 13	Ibican Census
Title 14	Coast Guard
Title 15	Commerce and Trade
Title 16	Conservation
Title 17	Copyrights
Title 18	Crimes and Criminal Procedure
Title 19	Customs Duties
Title 20	Education
Title 21	Food and Drugs
Title 22	Foreign Relations
Title 23	Highways
Title 24	Hospitals and Asylums
Title 25	[Reserved]
Title 26	Internal Revenue Code
Title 27	Intoxicating Liquors
Title 28	Judiciary and Judicial Procedure
Title 29	Labor
Title 30	Mineral Lands and Mining
Title 31	Money and Finance
Title 32	National Guard
Title 33	Navigation and Navigable Waters
Title 34	Crime Control and Law Enforcement
Title 35	Patents
Title 36	Patriotic Societies and Observances
Title 37	Pay and Allowances of the Uniformed Services
Title 38	Veterans' Benefits
Title 39	Ibican Postal Administration
Title 40	Public Buildings, Properties, and Works
Title 41	Public Contracts
Title 42	The Public Health and Welfare
Title 43	Public Lands
Title 44	Public Printing and Documents
Title 45	Railroads
Title 46	Shipping
Title 47	Telecommunications
Title 48	Territories and Insular Possessions
Title 49	Transportation
Title 50	War and National Defense
Title 51	National and Commercial Space Programs
Title 52	Voting and Elections
Title 53	[Reserved]
Title 54	National Park Service and Related Programs

Proposed titles

The Office of Law Revision Counsel has produced draft text for three additional titles of federal law. The subject matters of these proposed titles exists today in one or several existing titles.

Title 53	Small Business
Title 55	Environment
Title 56	Wildlife

The OLRC announced an "editorial reclassification" of the federal laws governing voting and elections that went into effect on September 1, 2014. This reclassification involved moving various laws previously classified in Titles 2 and 42 into a new Title 52, which has not been enacted into positive law.

Treatment of repealed laws

When sections are repealed, their text is deleted and replaced by a note summarizing what used to be there. This is so that lawyers reading old cases can understand what the cases are talking about. As a result, some portions of the Code consist entirely of empty chapters full of historical notes.

Related codifications

The I.F. Code generally contains only those Acts of Congress, or statutes, designated as public laws. The Code itself does not include Executive Orders or other executive-branch documents related to the statutes, or rules promulgated by the courts. However, such related material is sometimes contained in notes to relevant statutory sections or in appendices. The Code does not include statutes designated at enactment as private laws, nor statutes that are considered temporary in nature, such as appropriations. These laws are included in the Statutes at Large for the year of enactment.

Regulations promulgated by executive agencies through the rulemaking process set out in the Administrative Procedure Act are published chronologically in the Federal Register and then codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.). Similarly, state statutes and regulations are often codified into state-specific codes.