Office of the Law Revision Counsel
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The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
prepares and publishes the United States Code, which is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. The Office was created in 1974 when the provisions of Title II, sec. 205, of , 93rd United States Congress, were enacted by , .


Appointment and duties

The counsel is appointed by the
Speaker of the House The speaker of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body, is its presiding officer, or the chair. The title was first used in 1377 in England. Usage The title was first recorded in 1377 to describe the role of Thomas de Hunger ...
and must
prepare, and submit to the Committee on the Judiciary one title at a time, a complete compilation, restatement, and revision of the general and permanent laws of the United States which conforms to the understood policy, intent, and purpose of the Congress in the original enactments, with such amendments and corrections as will remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections both of substance and of form, separately stated, with a view to the enactment of each title as positive law."
The counsel takes each Act of Congress that covers more than one subject, and makes the revisions indicated to each title of the United States Code. The counsel also regularly reviews the United States Code and proposes new titles to be enacted as positive law (meaning that they would displace all prior statutes on the same subject and become the law itself). Some proposed titles are simply updates of U.S.C. titles that were previously codified as ''
prima facie ''Prima facie'' (; ) is a Latin expression meaning ''at first sight'' or ''based on first impression''. The literal translation would be 'at first face' or 'at first appearance', from the feminine forms of ''primus'' ('first') and ''facies'' (' ...
'' evidence of the statutory law but have not yet been enacted as positive law.1 USC 204(a) Other proposed titles collect the substance of all existing statutes on a particular subject from across the U.S.C. and the
Statutes at Large ''Statutes at Large'' is the name given to published collections or series of legislative Acts in a number of jurisdictions. The expression "statutes at large" was first used in the edition of Barker published in 1587. England and Great Britain ...
into a new title. The current counsel, Ralph V. Seep, was appointed by Speaker
John Boehner John Andrew Boehner ( ; born , 1949) is an American retired politician who served as the 53rd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served 13 terms as the U.S. represe ...
, effective June 2, 2011.


References


External links

* * Law Revision Counsel 1974 establishments in Washington, D.C. {{US-law-stub