Help Searching the United States Code

Searching for a Phrase Put the phrase in single quotes, as in: 'unethical conduct'

Boolean and Proximity Connectors Searching for: Finds documents containing: wheat ADJ corn wheat followed immediately by corn wheat AND corn both wheat and corn wheat OR corn either wheat or corn wheat NOT corn wheat but not corn wheat W/5 corn wheat followed within 5 words by corn wheat NEAR/5 corn wheat within 5 words of corn

Wildcards and Masks 1. A question mark represents individual characters. For example, searching int??city will retrieve all occurrences of int, followed by two characters, followed by city (e.g., intercity and intracity). 2. An asterisk represents an unlimited number of characters. For example, searching int*city will retrieve all occurrences of int, followed by any number of characters, followed by city. 3. A dollar sign represents one or zero characters. For example, searching labo$r will retrieve both labor and labour.

Searching by Topic Add an exclamation mark after the name of the topic. For example, searching grapes! will retrieve all documents that relate to grapes (but do not necessarily use the word "grapes"). The computer will search for all occurrences of "grapes", look at what words occur near "grapes", look at how near they are to "grapes", look at how often they occur near "grapes" versus how often they appear throughout the Code, put all of this information through a formula that results in a list of words related to "grapes", search on those new words, and then rank the results in relevance order.

Limiting Search to a Particular Field The documents in the Code database are divided into fields as shown in the table below. A search query can be constructed so that documents are found only if certain words appear in certain fields. To apply a field limiter to a single word, insert a colon and the field name after the word. For example, to retrieve documents containing 'wheat' in the STATUTE field, search: wheat:statute To apply a field limiter to an entire query, insert /F: and the field name after the query. For example, to retrieve documents containing 'short title' in the section heading, search: short adj title /f:head The following fields are available in the Code database: CITE Section citation (in the form: 2 USC Sec. 285b) EXPCITE Expanded citation (title, subtitle, chapter, subchapter, part, subpart, and division numbers, and appendix name) HEAD Section heading STATUTE Main statutory text SOURCE Source credit (Statutes at Large citations) STATAMEND Text of amendments having delayed effective dates TEXT Combination of CITE, EXPCITE, HEAD, STATUTE, SOURCE, and STATAMEND MISC1 Notes between STATAMEND and REFTEXT REFTEXT Reference in Text notes MISC2 Notes between REFTEXT and COD COD Codification notes MISC3 Notes between COD and CHANGE CHANGE Change of Name notes MISC4 Notes between CHANGE and TRANS TRANS Transfer of Function notes MISC5 Notes between TRANS and EXEC EXEC Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations MISC6 Notes between EXEC and CROSS CROSS Cross Reference notes and Definition notes MISC7 Notes between CROSS and SECREF SECREF Section Referred to in Other Section notes MISC8 Notes after SECREF NOTES Combination of REFTEXT, COD, CHANGE, TRANS, EXEC, CROSS, SECREF, and MISC1 to MISC8

Unsearchable Words The following words cannot be searched: and, any, be, by, of, on, or, such, the, this, to, which

Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations To find documents containing an executive order, enter EX W/2 ORD W/2 followed by a space, the executive order number, another space, and then /F:EXEC To find documents containing a presidential proclamation, enter PROC* W/2 followed by a space, the proclamation number, another space, and then /F:EXEC When the section of the Code containing the order or proclamation is found, use your browser to search within that section for the order or proclamation.

Making a permanent link to a U.S. Code section To make a permanent link to a U.S. Code section, insert the following code in your HTML, substituting the title number for title and the section number for section: <FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="http://uscode.house.gov/uscode-cgi/fastweb.exe?search"> <input type=hidden name=view value="uscview"> <input type=hidden name=db2 value="t01t04"> <input type=hidden name=db3 value="t05t08"> <input type=hidden name=db4 value="t09t12"> <input type=hidden name=db5 value="t13t16"> <input type=hidden name=db6 value="t17t20"> <input type=hidden name=db7 value="t21t25"> <input type=hidden name=db8 value="t26t28"> <input type=hidden name=db9 value="t29t32"> <input type=hidden name=db10 value="t33t36"> <input type=hidden name=db11 value="t37t40"> <input type=hidden name=db12 value="t41t42"> <input type=hidden name=db13 value="t43t44"> <input type=hidden name=db14 value="t45t48"> <input type=hidden name=db15 value="t49t50"> <input type=hidden name=db16 value="usclass"> <input type=hidden name=db17 value="uscnst"> <input type=hidden name=db18 value="usctbls"> <input type=hidden name=query size=35 value="title:cite w/3 section"> <input type=hidden name=operation value=simplesearch> <input type=hidden name=numresults value="100"> <input type=submit value="title U.S.C. § section"> </FORM> If you were to substitute 39 for title and 3008 for section, the result will be: .