Hello.
My name is Loren Turner and I am
one of your research professors for this
MOOC course.
By now you've already watched my
colleague, Jenny [INAUDIBLE]
six videos, on how a bill becomes a
Federal law.
Today, I'm going to help you focus on
how to interpret a citation to a Federal
statute.
This is an example of a citation to a
Federal statute, and an American lawyer
would be able
to [SOUND] instantly look at this
citation, and know
that it is a citation to a Federal
statute.
Would you like to learn how to do that?
I'll teach you how.
Let's begin with the abbreviation USC.
That stands for the United States Code,
which is
a source that organizes all federal
statutes by broad topic.
That number 22 that I skipped over at the
beginning of the citation, that
refers to the title of the United States
code that this statute is under.
There are 51 titles total of the U.S.
code and each title stands for it's own
subject.
Title 22 is on the subject of foreign
relations.
So an American lawyer, who specializes in
foreign relations would spend
a lot of time with title 22 of the United
States Code.
The number following the USC abbreviation
is the section number of the title 22.
Those little [UNKNOWN] lines that symbol
just stands for section or part.
So, this Federal statute falls in section
465 of title 22 of the United States Code.
The last piece of the puzzle is the year,
or the edition of this Federal statute.
So this citation tells us that the Federal
statute referred to here, is under
title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 465 in
the 2012 edition.
If you were to go to your local law
library,
and pick up the book version, you would
turn to
title 22 of the United States Code,
Section 465, and
you can do that, you're ready to do that
now.
Or you can plug in the citation on your
screen into
your search engine of your choice and read
it online for free.
So why don't you go do that, challenge
yourself, and I'll check in with you
later.
Happy researching.
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