That’s offense---the Code’s far clearer than US law alone

As I was watching the debate about the Obama Administration's landmark healthcare legislation a few years ago, I got a big laugh out of one incident I saw. A Member of Congress made the mistake of admitting in public that he had not read the whole bill, and people jumped all over him. How could he vote for a bill he hadn't even read? After that it seemed like every Member had read the bill--all 2,700 pages of it.

Take out a copy of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Pub. L. No. 111-148) and try to read it. Let's see, here's something interesting on page 265: “Title XXVII of the Public Health Service Act ... is amended in section 2704 ... as so redesignated by section 1201(2)-(A) in subsection (c)-(i) in paragraph (2), by striking ‘group health plan’ each place that such term appears and inserting ‘group or individual health plan.”’ Or what about this on page 283: “Section 1920(e) of such Act ..., as added by section 2001(a)(4)(B) and amended by section 2001(e)(2)(C), is amended by inserting ‘, clause (i)(IX),’ after ‘clause (i)(VIII).”’ The Affordable Care Act contains page after page of provisions like this, and after you get to title X of the law on page 883, start reading more carefully because you don't want to miss all those amendments that go back and make changes in titles I to IX.

Figuring out what the current law is by looking at the slip laws and Statutes at Large is impractical. That is why the United States Code is essential. What is incomprehensible in the Affordable Care Act makes sense once it is integrated into the Code. The Code organizes the Federal law into 51 broad subject matter titles and keeps the law up-to-date by incorporating amendments and new provisions into the text.

While there is little disagreement about the necessity of the Code, there has been some justifiable criticism of its usability. As a former director of the office that is responsible for the Code, let me discuss where the Code is now and where it is going in terms of three qualities that matter a great deal to users--accuracy, accessibility, and currency.

Accuracy

The Code is the responsibility of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (OLRC). During my many years at the OLRC, the accuracy of the Code was always the highest priority of the Office. It's not hard to see why. By law, the printed Code is evidence of the laws it contains in every federal and state court and public office. Lawyers, judges, agencies, and the public ultimately have to rely on it as the authoritative source for much of the federal law.

But making sure the Code is accurate is not easy; it takes a good system and a well-trained staff and it does take time. The updating process involves classifying new laws to the Code, revising the Code to incorporate amendments and new provisions, and preparing editorial material that explains and documents each change in the Code.

On average, between 5,000 and 7,500 pages of new law is enacted during a two-year Congress. Each of these laws is carefully read by a team of lawyers at the OLRC. For each provision of the bill, the OLRC must decide whether it should go into the Code (general and permanent provisions only), and if so, where. This is the process of “classifying” a law and results in a law's Code classifications. Once the classifications are finalized, the OLRC begins actual text editing and preparation of editorial material that provides information about the source of Code sections, their arrangement, the references they contain, and their history. The integration of new law into the Code can be very time consuming. Much of it is amendatory, and Congress, unlike many state legislatures, tends to favor the use of “cut and bite” amendments. Rather than replacing an old section with a new one, these amendments make changes by specific word and phrase substitutions--and there can be a lot of these. For example, my favorite section in the Code, 42 U.S.C. § 1395ww, was amended over 90 times by 19 different sections of the Affordable Care Act. The rest of that Act made similar types of amendments to hundreds of other sections in the Code. Each of these amendments had to be properly executed and accurately documented in the source credits and with appropriate editorial notes.

The OLRC has an outstanding staff, but even the best editors will make mistakes in working through tens of thousands of changes in the Code. To ensure that these mistakes are caught and corrected before publication, the OLRC uses a multi-level review system to thoroughly check all the work done in the Office. Every update to the Code is rechecked at least once, and any change affecting the text of a law is checked even more thoroughly. This system has worked well over the years to ensure that the Code is very accurate.

Accessibility

While the accuracy of the Code is excellent, accessibility has not always been the best, but it is getting much better. By accessibility, I mean convenience of use. The Code has been available in print since 1926, but the print version is expensive to buy and is no longer available in many libraries. Moreover, finding something in the *11 printed Code often means relying on an index and piecing together a section from both the main edition and a supplement. The printed version is often useful for browsing through certain laws and is the best version for authenticating the law, but for most purposes the online Code is the preferred choice.

Since the 1990s, the OLRC has maintained an online version of the Code on the House of Representatives' server at http://uscode.house.gov/ (“uscode website”). The uscode website combines the latest main edition with the latest supplement to make a virtual main edition that can be browsed and searched. Unfortunately, the site uses an outdated search engine and features a display and navigation tools that are rather poor. Recognizing the need for a more accessible online Code, the OLRC recently launched a new website in beta which will eventually replace the old uscode website.

The beta website, located at http://uscodebeta.house.gov/, was developed and designed to meet the particular needs of the OLRC, legislative drafters, and legal researchers. The core of the website is an open source, customized Apache LuceneTM search engine with a SolrTM search platform. There is a simple search facility for quickly accessing specific Code sections or performing simple word or phrase searches and an advanced search facility for sophisticated searching of Code content using delimiters such as field or Code hierarchy restrictions, Boolean logic, proximity criteria, and case-sensitive specifications. The presentation of search results is greatly improved compared to the uscode website and allows for easy movement through the search results, to other parts of the Code, and within a Code section. The new site also includes the ability to browse and drill down using the Code hierarchy of titles, chapters, subchapters, etc.

In addition, the beta website includes several specialized tools for accessing Code tables--such as the Popular Name Table and Table III--and Cite Checker, a tool for quickly verifying the accuracy of cross references. At the top of each Code section displayed on the screen is a currency date which indicates whether the section is affected by any new laws not yet in the Code. Full currency information for the entire Code is clearly spelled out on a special Currency and Updating page. Additional webpages are included to explain the content of the Code and website.

The beta website was recently upgraded to include better printing options, embedded links to cross referenced Code sections, links from the Code classification tables to Statutes at Large pages, and other features. Most significantly, the upgraded beta website was given the capability to search and browse prior versions of the Code, the latest finalized virtual main edition, and a new more current version of the Code. The more current version of the Code, described in more detail below, is now the default choice for searching and browsing the Code. Further enhancements are under development, including a better cross-reference searching tool and links from Act citations in the Code to the Statutes at Large, and should be brought online once all technical issues are resolved. When all these improvements are fully implemented, the beta site will offer some excellent tools that will make researching the Code much easier.