Privacy Law

"In recent years, information privacy has emerged as one of the central issues of our times. Today, we have hundreds of laws pertaining to privacy: the common law torts, criminal law, evidentiary privileges, constitutional law, at least twenty federal statutes, and numerous statutes in each of the fifty states." (From Proskauer on Privacy: A Guide to Privacy and Data Security Law in the Information Age.)

The United States Code (U.S.C.) contains the general and permanent laws of the United States, organized into titles based on subject matter. New statutes must be added to or fit into the existing U.S.C. A complete new edition of the U.S.C. (“main edition”) is printed by the Government Publishing Office (GPO) every six years, and five annual cumulative supplements (designated as Supplements I through V) are printed in the intervening years. The U.S.C. currently consists of 54 titles (Title 53 is reserved) and five appendices. The U.S.C. is prepared and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (OLRC) of the U.S. House of Representatives pursuant to 2 U.S.C. § 285b.

Because the United States Code contains only the general and permanent laws of the United States, not every provision contained in every public law goes into the U.S.C. The OLRC reviews every provision of every public law to determine whether it should go into the U.S.C., and, if so, where. This process is known as U.S. Code classification.

The Law Library's Case Law guide provides links and information on how to search for cases.

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For additional guidance on how to research federal legislative history, see the Law Library's Federal Legislative History guide.