Locating and Updating Federal Regulations

The Federal Register (the daily newspaper of the Federal government) is a legal newspaper published every business day by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA

How is the Federal Register organized?

Each issue of the Federal Register is organized into four categories:

• Presidential Documents, including Executive orders and proclamations
• Rules and Regulations, including policy statements and interpretations of rules
• Proposed Rules, including petitions for rulemaking and other advance proposals
• Notices, including scheduled hearings and meetings open to the public, grant applications, and administrative orders
• National Archives and Records Administration - About the Federal Register

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) annual edition is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the departments and agencies of the Federal Government. It is divided into 50 titles that represent broad areas subject to Federal regulation. The 50 subject matter titles contain one or more individual volumes, which are updated once each calendar year, on a staggered basis.

The annual update cycle is as follows:

Titles 1-16 are revised as of January 1;  titles 17-27 are revised as of April 1; titles 28-41 are revised as of July 1; and titles 42-50 are revised as of October 1. Each title is divided into chapters, which usually bear the name of the issuing agency. Each chapter is further subdivided into parts that cover specific regulatory areas. Large parts may be subdivided into subparts. All parts are organized in sections, and most citations to the CFR refer to material at the section leve

A. CFR Parts Affected from the Federal Register

Published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. The Federal Register contains rules and regulations which are regulatory documents having general applicability and legal effect. Most rules are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).

Users are able to browse CFR Parts Affected from the Federal Register to find final and proposed rules that affect the CFR and have been published in the Federal Register within the past 24 hours, week, month, or within a specific date range.

B. LIST OF CFR Sections Affected

The List of CFR Sections Affected (LSA) lists proposed, new, and amended Federal regulations that have been published in the Federal Register since the most recent revision date of a Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) title. It is published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration.

Each LSA issue is cumulative and contains the CFR part and section numbers, a description of its status (e.g., amended, confirmed, revised), and the Federal Register page number where the change(s) may be found. The LSA is issued monthly; however, on FDsys users are also able to browse CFR Parts Affected from the Federal Register to find final and proposed rules that affect the CFR and have been published in the Federal Register within the past 24 hours, week, month, or within a specific date range.

FDsys contains the LSA from 1997 forward. Documents are available as ASCII text and Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files.