There are many ways you can locate federal regulations. Which method you use depends on what information is available to you. If you are lucky you may already have a citation to a relevant regulation, or a citation to a relevant statute. Our law library maintains one year of the Federal Register in print and also maintains a copy of the Code of Federal Regulation.
Subscription databases:
In addition to accessing your regulation on Westlaw Edge and Lexis+ you can also access regulations via fee based subscriptions such as e.g. Proquest and HeinOnline.
Topical Looseleaf Services and Subject matter databases often contain the text of relevant regulations and these publications are updated frequently.
Keep in mind that this information is also readily available for free online many times.
All of these online sources allow you to do a source driven or content driven source. The problems which these types of searches is that you may have to filter through a lot of irrelevant results!
No cost options via govinfo.gov or Regulations.gov:
The good news is that once you have the statutory citation you can use a table to identify relevant reg’s. How? By browsing the CFR Parallel Table. Go to govinfo.gov > click on category > Regulatory Information on the right >select this option. This will allow you to access the Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and rules. Your statutory citation will lead you to relevant regulations in the CFR.
1. If you have the statutory citation in the USC then head to CFR indexes and findlng tools. Parallel Table of Authorities will allow you to find l to identify the CFR Part that you will need to explore
2. However, you can also search with key words in govinfo.gov
3.Via E-CFR . E-cfr will not alert you of pending reg’s that have recently been posted in the Federal Register. However, there is an option to sign up from alerts; Please beware that Federal Register is the most current source. Remember to always consult the Federal Register after checking the E-CFR. One more caveat. You cannot cite to this source. You will have to locate the most recent CFR and check for any updates that may be in place since that was published last.
4. Via regulations.gov
5. Via the https://www.federalregister.gov/