Constitutional Interpretation: Regulations

Administrative regulations are very similar to statutes, except they are produced by administrative agencies (e.g. the Department of Health and Human Services--HHS) instead of legislatures.  There are two main sources for federal administrative regulations:

• Code of Federal Regulations (CFR): Codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government.  The CFR is organized into 50 titles, which represent broad subject areas.  Regulations concerning national parks and public property, for example, are contained in Title 36 of the CFR.  The CFR publishes its own index, and there is now a multi-volume index to the CFR published by West.
  

• Federal Register (FR):  The official daily publication for the Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices of federal agencies and organizations, as well as Executive Orders and other Presidential Documents.  The Federal Register is also the place to find agency contact information.  The Federal Register has monthly and annual indexes in print to find materials by agency or subject.

The CFR and Federal Register are available online in the following places:

Documents of state and federal administrative agencies may also be useful sources in your research.  The law library has collections of selected federal government documents in print, microform, and online formats.  They can be found by searching POLAR by keyword, title, or author (by using the specific agency or department name as the author--e.g., United States Department of Agriculture).  Government documents in print and microform can be found on the north side of the library.

Lexis and Westlaw also have databases of selected agency documents.

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