Talk:List of United States federal legislation

Wade-Davis
Why is the Wade-Davis Bill listed? It failed. 69.19.2.225 08:00, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

All caps
Does this article's title need all caps? Maybe List of United States federal legislation or List of United States Federal legislation? RickK 02:25 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

no probably not, if you change the name, also fix the "What links here". dml

Acts of Congress vs. legislation
Is there any real difference between "Acts of Congress" and "Legislation?" Do we need separate lists? (this page has both). -Anthropos 07:00, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * There should only be one list. dml 13:55, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Category
Any point in making a category version of this page, so new law entries can be added automatically? --Calton 06:08, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

User:BD2412/Federal legislation
I've compiled a list of "major" federal acts from the table of legislation in Major Acts of Congress, Brian K. Landsberg (ed), ISBN: 0028657497. Many are already in here, and many others need articles written. I'll be able to work on it when I get back from the Bar exam, in about a week. Cheers! -- BD2412 talk 16:31, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Update = project done. BD2412  T 16:48, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Federal Legislation Infobox
I've added the new infobox to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act page. Feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks! --Saucy Intruder 01:29, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Divide the page?
It's 68 kb now - I propose splitting it in three, with one article covering up to the 50th Congress, a second to the 100th, and the third everything after. Thoughts? bd2412 T 01:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I really like this as one page. It allows for better searching (you know, with your browser's "find" function).  It's also, frankly, prettier.  I just like it that way, darn it.—Markles 02:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC).  Furthermore, Article size states that lists may be exceptions to the "too long" rule; and, in fact, Special:Longpages, shows that most of the long pages are lists.—Markles 02:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Minor legislation
This is a list of legislation which I've removed from the article because they were either minor or redlinked. Feel free to restore them or delete them from here. —Markles 21:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * 1992-10-28 - Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, ,
 * 1996-08-03 - Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, ,
 * 1996-08-20 - Small Business Job Protection Act, ,
 * 1998-10-31 - Veterans Employment Opportunities Act, ,
 * 2001-09-28 - United States-Jordan Free Trade Area Implementation Act, ,
 * 2002-11-27 - Great Lakes and Lake Champlain Act of 2002, ,
 * 2003-05-27 - United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003, ,
 * 2003-09-03 - United States-Chile Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, ,
 * 2003-09-03 - United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, ,

Amendments and legislation
Markles, I respectfully submit that your notion that Constitutional Amendments aren't legislation is misguided and incorrect. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "legislation" as "1. The act or process of legislating; lawmaking. 2. A proposed or enacted law or group of laws." Definition one applies to the amendment approval and subsequent ratification process, while definition two most definitely applies to amendments themselves, given that the Constitution itself explicitly states that it is the "supreme law of the land". Groupthink 21:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

My name was bandied around a little, so I'll weigh in. First, Constitutional Amendmenets all are joint resolutions, not concurrent resolutions as mentioned by Groupthink. The fact that president's have signed these amendment-proposing joint resolutions is irrelevant, because that signature has no effect because these resolutions are submitted directly to the states. The President can't veto them either. Joint resolutions and regular bills are the only two forms of legislation passed by Congress that can become public law, such as the current stop-gap spending measure for fiscal year 2008. They key distinction between a joint resolution for a Constitutional Amendment and other legislation is that they do not receive a public law number, even when ratified by the states. The Archivist of the United States simply issues a certification that it is duly part of the Constution. This article list should be reserved to only those notable pieces of legislation that were enacted into law through signature by the president and which are assigned a public law number.Dcmacnut 14:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * A fair point. However, legislation is a subset of law.  It is created through the legislative process.  Statutes are legislation; court decisions are not.  Both, however, are laws. Very often the word "law" is broadly defined, as it is in your definition from the Amer. Heritage Dictionary.  This Wikipedia article (List of United States federal legislation) is limited to Acts of Congress.  Congress does other things which are not included here; such as: resolutions, constitutional amendments, and internal business.  This article is strictly for statutes as promulgated under Congress's constitutional authority to enact legislation.  All of the items in this list were enacted by majorities of both houses and signed by the president or enacted over the President's veto.  Constituional amendments are, of course, supreme, but this list is only concerned with statutes, a.k.a. legislation. Also, in your Edit summary for the change you said Amendments aren't "non-legislation", quite the opposite! They're uber-legislation!  Über-legislation is not legislation, any more than sub-legislation would be. I don't doubt that the constitution is supreme to legislation, but that right there means it's not itself legislation.  Would you also say that constituional amendments should be included in lists of executive orders?  How about in lists of common law holdings?  Or lists of local ordinances?  These are all important types of laws, but they are all in their own ways different.—Markles 21:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Your points are also fair, and I don't disagree with any of them, especially after re-reading the intro graf to this article (although I think you're twisting my words with my "uber-legislation" point – what I meant by uber-legislation is legislation that controls all other legislation, not something of a different but superior nature to legislation). However, I would like to point out that while the amendments themselves might not precisely technically qualify for this list, there is a legislative process (and here I'm using that phrase as you used it, to mean an Act of Congress) underlying their proposal and ratification.  Aside from the non-standard states convention route, an amendment requires a resolution from both Houses of Congress in order to be proposed for ratification.  Now granted, the resolution in question would be a concurrent resolution, not a joint resolution, but we're not talking about your run-of-the-mill adjournment notice or enrollment correction here:  we're talking about a con. res. requiring two-thirds approval from both the House and the Senate, which is then sent to the states for ratification.  Now Dcmacnut also makes a good point in the article edit history:  the President does not have to sign an amendment-proposing con. res. in order for it to go before the states... but what s/he neglected to mention is that the President can sign and has signed amendment proposals due to their importance.  One other note:  once ratified, amendments are published in U.S. Statutes at Large. Groupthink 16:39, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Groupthink: amendments are a special case of "legislation" because they result from actions by Congress and state legislatures.  The fact that amendments could be classed as "über-legislation" doesn't change this in my opinion.  Supreme Court rulings, on the other hand, are clearly (again, in my view) not legislation, so I have no quarrel at all with taking the "race legislation" tag off the Wong Kim Ark case.  But I do think the category tag should be reinstated on the Fourteenth Amendment article.  Richwales 02:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No. There are many kinds of law: Executive orders, constitutional provisions, case law, statutes. One does not overflow to another.  Some statutes can dictate how an executive order may work, but that doesn't mean an executive order is a kind of statute.  Some constitutional provisions control statutes, but that doesn't mean constitutional provisions are statutes.  Some judge-issued writ may order an executive official to act, but that doesn't mean that the judge issued an executive order.  The kinds of law may interact, but they are each separate and distinct.  This is very simple.—Markles 10:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Anarchist Exclusion Act
Does anyone know how to find more info about a piece of legislation? I have (32 Stat. at L. 1222, chap. 1012, § 39, sec. 32) as a starter, and it's been referred to as the "Anarchist Exclusion Act" several times. It was passed on the last day of the 57th Congress (March 3, 1903). Are there sources for finding more details about a piece? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Murderbike (talk • contribs) 07:54, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't find too much on it online. If you can, go to a library (preferably one which is a US Government Depository Library), and ask for volume 32 of the "United States Statutes at Large"'.  Look at page 1222.  Start from there.  Good luck. I've linked the citation and created an article, so if you get more information, please put it there: Anarchist Exclusion Act, ch. 1012,, 1903-03-03, 57th United States Congress. —Markles 16:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool, I've got the article going in my sandbox, was probably gonna finish it today. I'll just paste into that spot. Thanks! Murderbike (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Now merged into Immigration Act of 1903. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

This list should be complete
Why is this list not complete?--Cdogsimmons (talk) 21:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Because hundreds of statutes are passed every two years. That's thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of statutes.  Many (most) of them are not significant.  For example, every time a Post Office is names, a statute is enacted.  Snooze.—Markles 22:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If you don't think you're up to the task, do you mind if I give it a go?--Cdogsimmons (talk) 03:04, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe there's well over 100,000 status that have passed since congress was created and most likely more. Since this would make list unmanageable. This being said, there are probably some major ones that are not on the list that should be. Maybe work on those --Patrick (talk) 03:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Standards for inclusion
Let's NOT just download the entire THOMAS database, or some such thing. Let's develop standards for inclusion.—Markles 12:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Standards for inclusion are important to establish before we invest a significant amount of time such a project as this will require. I will concede that (for now) it would be ok to exclude private acts that don't have a lot of relevance to the law today and would only be notable as historically interesting tid-bits. (It is my contention that all acts of Congress passed into law would fulfill notability requirements). However, I think all public acts at least deserve a mention. I also think that this should be looked at as a long term project akin to the List of United States Supreme Court cases, that although there may be a large number of red links now, over the next few decades perhaps, each of these links will be developed because each is an important part of American History. I am especially surprised that links have actually been removed from this list in the past just because there is not yet an article on the Act. Redlinks are invitations for editors to increase their edit counts and should not be feared. If there are 100,000 individual Acts, obviously, the list will need to be split apart (it's on the long side already). I would suggest that the list be split by year for clarity's sake.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 16:00, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that the list should be a lot more inclusive, and I agree that the list should be split (the Supreme Court splits are a good model) both by year and by subject matter (yes, a huge amount of work, but worth it in the end, I expect). Also, as for red links, there are some public acts passed by Congress that will never merit an individual article. These, I think, should generally redirect to more general articles discussing U.S. law on that subject matter. Cheers! bd2412  T 16:45, 2 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Many acts do not have formal names. Just look at : "A bill to make a technical correction to section 3009 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005."  Why do we have to list everything?  This list is short and thereby manageable.  If you feel compelled to make a complete list, please make it a separate article from this one. Don't ruin this list by including every last little Act ever passed.  47 of the (so far) 293 Public Laws in this current Congress just rename Post Offices.  There already is a fantastic free government repository off all this information: THOMAS.—Markles 17:03, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I note that I had previously added all of the acts listed in Brian K. Landsberg's Major Acts of Congress, and some of those were deleted, I guess for being redlinks. At the very least, those should be re-added. bd2412  T 17:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that THOMAS is good but I think Wikipedia's better. Wikipedia's more user friendly (THOMAS I have noticed is not exactly self-explanatory) and obviously more widely used. Markles, if you want to keep this list seperate that's fine with me, but it does make me wonder what this list is actually for. Notable acts? Says who? They're all notable. Acts that have wikipedia articles? There are still a bunch of redlinks on this list. Manageability should be a secondary concern to comprehensiveness.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Recentism
This Article also appears to suffer from a severe case of WP:recentism. I'll add the tag.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 01:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have to disagree with placing the tag. I'm rather surprised by the amount of old legislation we do have up. Just another pointless tag. --Patrick (talk) 01:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I won't replace the tag but here's how this list breaks down the number of acts at this point in time:
 * 1789 to 1801 - 27
 * 1801 to 1811 - 7
 * 1811 to 1821 - 4
 * 1821 to 1831 - 3
 * 1831 to 1841 - 3
 * 1841 to 1851 - 7
 * 1851 to 1861 - 3
 * 1861 to 1871 - 22
 * 1871 to 1881 - 16
 * 1881 to 1891 - 12
 * 1891 to 1901 - 9
 * 1901 to 1911 - 14
 * 1911 to 1921 - 25
 * 1921 to 1931 - 20
 * 1931 to 1941 - 58
 * 1941 to 1951 - 40
 * 1951 to 1961 - 33
 * 1961 to 1971 - 73
 * 1971 to 1981 - 75
 * 1981 to 1991 - 47
 * 1991 to 2001 - 52
 * 2001 to present - 67

The recentism may not be flagrant but I would say it it is still severe (the 60 year period between 1801 and 1861 has 27 acts and the 57 year period from 1941 to 2008 has 387 acts).--Cdogsimmons (talk) 14:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Sunken Military Craft Act 2004
Does anyone have any information about the above US legislation - I imagine it must be federal because I believe it applies to all US military craft anywhere in the world Viv Hamilton (talk) 07:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It is Title XIV of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005,, , .—Markles 10:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I am working on a piece of UK law Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 and wanted to make references to laws of other nations.  Viv Hamilton (talk) 14:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

U.S.Code
I'm surprised there's no mention of codified law here, or apparently elsewhere in Wikipedia. Granted the emphasis here is on the individual laws, but codification is part of the law making process. --Bill Harshaw (talk) 22:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course there are numerous mention of codification in Wikipedia. See United States Code, Act of Congress, Code of Federal Regulations, codification (also redirected from codified law, etc.  This is simply a list of federal legislation.  Look at the bottom of the page and you will also find categories of articles about law and legislation that can help you out.   Don&#39;tKnowItAtAll (talk) 09:50, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

can we remove "partial" from the lead?
i.e. change "partial list of notable..." to "list of notable..." ?

I understand the desire not to mislead people into thinking the list is somehow comprehensive. But when I was a new Wikipedian (a few months ago), that label misled me (and perhaps still misleads others) into thinking that there is some criterion other than notability for something to be on this list. Also, revisions were made to the lead to the last two weeks which moved the statistics on the # of existing bills closer to the beginning.

(By the way, at some point are we going to create a separate comprehensive list of Public Laws organized by Congress, much like the Supreme Court people use for Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume?)

Agradman talk/contribs 19:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Naval Appropriations Act of 1916
The criteria for notability of items in this list is unclear to me. Should the above (Naval Act of 1916) be in this list? It was notable in terms of the USN's buildup prior to WWI. Rwessel (talk) 19:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Dates
What dates are used, when Congress passed the bill or when it was enacted? Int21h (talk) 16:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Enacted.—Markles 19:08, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2007-2008
I keep reading about the Child Soldiers Prevention Act that affects US aid to foreign countries who actively recruit child soldiers, the one in the news today because the current administration issued a waiver for four nations. It is variously credited to 2007 & 2008, but it isn't listed here & there's no Wikipedia article on it. Can anyone help? wbm (talk) 06:50, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The Act was first named the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2007. Once enacted, it became the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008.
 * I suggest you write the article yourself. You can do it!  :) Here's the info you'll need to get you started.
 * Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008 → Click on this red link to start a new article
 * → Here is the full data
 * → Here you'll find information on the bill's legislative history
 * Once you've written the article, click on this link, Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008, and make a "redirect" to the article you created:
 * If you have any questions, leave them here: and I (and other editors perhaps) will check in to help.
 * Good luck, and  Be bold!!.—Markles  12:59, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposed
It's been three years since this article split/forked the centuries out into subpages:
 * List of United States federal legislation,
 * List of United States federal legislation, 1789–1901,
 * List of United States federal legislation, 1901–2001, and
 * List of United States federal legislation, 2001–present.

I suggest we merge them back into one article. There's little benefit to having four articles when one will do. The pages have not grown much since the split, or at least enough to justify a concern that one combined page would become too unwieldy.

The last two Congresses (so far) have also split their lists because they are complete lists of statutes, not merely selected blue links (Acts of the 112th United States Congress and Acts of the 113th United States Congress). These would not change in this proposal. —GoldRingChip 18:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The daughter lists (or a different set) will just end up being split off again. It is only a matter of time before the whole list is completed. James500 (talk) 23:36, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The individual articles are pretty long already. I think re-merging them would make navigating tougher on people with slower internet or using a mobile device. Also, moving forward into future Congresses, I would expect greater coverage on legislation. Wikipedia exists now and didn't previously. I'm assuming people are more likely to add information about new things than go back and write about very old ones. HistoricMN44 (talk) 19:39, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Discussion. I'm not really all that happy with this list, period. What exactly is its purpose?  If it's to list *notable* acts, there needs to be some criteria, as there's a bunch of seeming trivial stuff in the list now (109-3, 110-2, as a couple of random examples).  If it's meant to be an inclusive list, it certainly fails that test.  And a single complete exclusive list would be far too long (probably leading to a page near 2MB).  And with the Acts of the nnnth United States Congress series of articles (see for example Acts of the 111th United States Congress), which are supposed to be a complete list for that session, wouldn't it be better to link there instead of providing a partial list?  But only a limited number of those exist (including a somewhat unloved page for the 110th).  Perhaps this should just be a placeholder until more full session pages are created, holding what we *do* have, and then serving as an index, or does that become redundant with Category:Lists of United States legislation?  So what do we want?  Then we might come up with a plan to get there.  Rwessel (talk) 01:13, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Acts of Congress easily satisfy LISTN. Primary legislation is unlikely to be non-notable. Legislation is never trivial. Even if it is preposterous and pointless, it is still important for being a scandal. A list of notable Acts would violate WP:CIRCULAR. A complete list would not be too long. Wikipedia is NOTPAPER, so there is no limit on the length of lists, because we can spin off as many daughter lists as we like. Confining lists to notable entries would probably kill the project. That sort of thing is the reason for the problems we have with editor retention. James500 (talk) 02:32, 29 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Are you discussing a possible hybrid list? Separate pages for the "Acts of Congress XXX" with only a selection of notable articles/acts listed here? So the other pages would have every public law from that congress, while this one would have "Main article X" and then a short list of notable items? The problem with that (and maybe I'm just knocking down my own idea) is that it would take a lot of time to select which bills were notable AND editors not part of this discussion would no doubt add their own items later. On the other hand, both the 110th and 111th Congress pages have existing lists of notable legislation. Clearly other people are already making decisions about what the major legislation from a congress is. We could work up a set of criteria, explain it clearly on the talk page, and then choose to be inclusive rather than exclusive when it came to other people adding stuff (so as to be friendly to other people who want to contribute). Off the top of my head, appropriations legislation, the yearly National Defense Authorization Acts, farm bills from every five years, legislation authorizing wars, and major policy changes (like Obamacare, No Child Left Behind) would all be notable. I'm not voting for this per se, but I don't think it would be impossible to do. Thanks. HistoricMN44 (talk) 15:05, 29 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that we should ultimately have a complete daughter list for each session of congress. We can then use this page as an index of those lists. But we should create the daughter lists before tinkering with the four lists we are discussing here. James500 (talk) 02:50, 29 January 2014 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned there are already some articles of the form Acts of the nnnth United States Congress (see for example Acts of the 111th United States Congress). There is also wikisource::Portal:Acts_of_the_United_States_Congresses.  Rwessel (talk) 05:56, 29 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with James500 that we shouldn't tinker too much here before we have other lists in place. I'd hate to remove content, even incomplete content, before we had replaced it. I also wouldn't consider the Wikisource portal as a possible replacement for doing this here. (That may not be what you are suggesting). The wikisource page for the 113th (current) Congress only has one public law on it (wikisource::Portal:Acts of the United States Congresses/Acts of the 113th United States Congress). HistoricMN44 (talk) 15:05, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * @GoldRingChip 41.115.66.178 (talk) 14:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Separate lists are warranted due to the size of each list. I see no benefit to merging them.  I see only a long and difficult-to-wade-through list.  Also, I Concur. with James500, and would like to see a daughter list for each session of congress.ideal. Drdpw (talk)