1. THE CFR AND THE FEDERAL REGISTER

     1. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR): Subject codification
of currently effective federal regulations (published from
1938 on)
     --Divided into fifty titles (substantially paralleling those
of the USC), chapters (covering regulations of an individual
agency), parts (covering regulations on a particular subject),
and sections.
     --Cited by title and section: e.g., 49 CFR sec. 1001 cites to
Title 49 (transportation regulations), section 1001 (a regulation
of the ICC)
     --Revised yearly on a quarterly basis: Titles 1-16 contain
regulations in effect as of January 1; titles 17-27 as of April 1;
titles 28-41 as of July 1; titles 42-50 as of October 1.  Each
annual set, when finally published, replaces the prior year's CFR
(and is a different color)

     2.  Federal Register: Daily gazette publishing all proposed
and final federal regulations, presidential proclamations and
executive orders, and various regulatory notices (published 1936
on)
     --Cited by volume and page: e.g., 42 Fed. Reg. 36,000.
     --Often contains background comment and explanation on
proposed and final regulations (i.e., their "legislative history")

2. I HAVE A CFR CITE: IS IT STILL "GOOD LAW"?

     1. Check the cite in the most current edition of the CFR.
     2. Check the cite in the most current monthly "LSA: List of
Sections Affected" pamphlet (at the end of the CFR) for tables,
cumulated from the date of the last revision of the CFR title,
giving cites to pages in the daily Federal Register printing new or
proposed regulations affecting CFR sections.
     3. Check the cutoff date of the LSA pamphlet and then check
the "Lists of Sections Affected" tables in:
          a. The last Federal Register for each month thereafter
(cumulating references to changes during that month); and
          b. The most recent Federal Register issue for the current
month (for references to new changes).
     4. Check Shepard's Code of Federal Regulations Citations to
see if the CFR cite has been affected by a court decision. 
          (Some looseleaf services provide references to citing
administrative agency decisions.)

3. WHERE CAN I FIND THE REGULATIONS OF "X" AGENCY?
     Check the CFR Index volume, which is largely arranged by
agency name.

4. WHERE CAN I FIND REGULATIONS ON A PARTICULAR SUBJECT?
    
     1. The CFR Index volume: provides some subject access.
     2. The CIS Index to the CFR: provides detailed subject
indexing; often useful for particular terms.
     3. Federal Register Indexes, cumulated monthly; useful in that
many regulatory announcements, published in the Federal Register,
do not end up as regulations in the CFR.
     4. Lexis and Westlaw: Carry the full text of the CFR and the
Federal Register; often the easiest place to track down distinctive
terms of phrases.

5. I HAVE A REFERENCE TO A STATUTE; HOW CAN I FIND IF REGULATIONS
HAVE BEEN ADOPTED UNDER IT?
     The CFR Index volume and the more current LSA pamphlets
contain tables giving cross references from statutes to regulations
adopted under them.  (There are separate tables for statutes in the
USC and for uncodified statutes in the Statutes at Large: check
both, because agencies are often inconsistent in citing rulemaking
authority.)

6. I HAVE A REGULATION; HOW CAN I FIND THE STATUTE AUTHORIZING ITS
ADOPTION?
     Check the authority note located at the beginning of each part
of a title (occasionally an additional authority note will follow
particular sections) for citation to authorizing statutes.

7. I HAVE A CFR CITE; HOW CAN I FIND WHERE THE REGULATION WAS
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER?
     Check the source note located at the beginning of
each part of a title (or sometimes after a particular
section) for this reference; often the Federal Register
will provide useful background material.

                      A NOTE ON GPO ACCESS

     Both the Federal Register (back to 1994) and the current CFR
are available from the Government Printing Office homepage, GPO
Access.  Its address is  --
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/    
     If GPO Access is being balky, try this alternative routes to
the GPO material:
     GPO Gate (Univ. of California): an interface with GPO Access
address: 
http://www.gpo.ucop.edu:80/index.html