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| The President is the administrative
head of the executive branch of the Government, which includes numerous
agencies, both temporary and permanent as well as the 13 executive departments.
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Congress, the legislative branch
of the government, is comprised of the elected representatives of the people
on the Senate and in the House of Representatives.
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Articles III, stat. 1, of the Constitution of the United States provides that "the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts and the Congress may form time to time ordain and establish." |
| The agencies of the executive branch make administrative
law. It is comprised of rules (also called regulations),
and thay have the force of law and are subject to review by the federal
courts. Rules are frequently promulagted to implement legislation.
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Congress enacts law through leagislation by passing
bills & resolutions, and this is called statutory law. Through
legislation, Congress often delegates the power of promulgating regulations
and of adjudication to administrative bodies.
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Courts, in deciding cases and controversies, make common
law, which is also known as case law or judicial authority.
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| Rules are arranged in two ways:
first chronologically in administrative registers and later topically
in administrative codes.
Rules and proposed rules of federal administrative agencies are issued every government working day in the Federal Register. These are subsequently codified according to specific regulatory topics into the 50 titles of the Code of Federal Regulations (the CFR). Federal administrative decisions are issued by the agencies, and their patterns of publication and availability vary greatly.
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Enacted bills & resolutions
are issued chronologically as session laws. At the federal level,
these are called Public Laws. They typically appear first in United
States Code Congressional and Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.)
or in the monthly paphlets of one of the commercially published, annotated
codes mentioned below.
Subsequently to the appearance of session laws comes the codified version in a statutory code. The official code is the United States Code (U.S.C.). Two privately published in a much more timely fashion. They are the United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.) and the United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.)
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Published court decisions appear
in reporters.
The official roporter for the judicial opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court is United States Reports (US). hree unofficial reporters are West's Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct.), Lawyer's Edition (L.Ed.), and United States Law Week (U.S.L.W.). Not all decisions of the Ciruit Courts of Appeal and the District Courts (federal trial courts) are published. Of those that are, Circuit Court opinions appear in the Federal Reporter (F and F.2d) and District Court decisions appear in the Federal Supplement (F.Supp.). Digests are the finding tools for case law. Ther are digests specifically for Supreme Court reporters plus West's Federal Practice Digest for all federal reporters. |
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