Basic Legal Research Guide: Administrative Law

The print Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) is shelved at KF 70 .A2, on the 4th floor of the Library.  See the map below for the location of the C.F.R. on the 4th floor in relation to the stairwell and elevator.

Regulations.gov, is a U.S. government website where members of the public can read and post comments pertaining to proposed regulations and related documents. The site also includes final regulations and agency notices. The eRulemaking Program Management Office, with the assistance of partner federal agencies, manages Regulations.gov.

Finding decisions issued by administrative agencies that interpret their rules is often an important step in administrative law research.  Remember that, in many instances, you'll have to complete the judicial procedures (filings, appeals, etc.) established by the agency before you can file your case in a federal court--a process known as "exhausting your administrative remedies."  Fortunately, there are several sources that include these decisions:

1. Recent decisions are often available on agency websites. Check out USA.gov's A-Z Index of U.S. Government Departments and Agencies for links. A list of official publications of agency decisions (and how to cite them) is available in the 21st edition of The Bluebook in table T1.2.
2. Commercial loose-leaf publishers (Bloomberg BNA and CCH) often include administrative decisions in their subject-specific publications.
3. Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, and Lexis include some administrative decisions, and HeinOnline's U.S. Federal Agency Documents, Decisions, and Appeals database also includes them.
4. Remember that the U.S.C.S. (Lexis's print version of the annotated U.S.C.) includes administrative decisions, so you might find references to these in the annotations of the enabling statute for your regulation.

Administrative law is the body of primary law created by administrative agencies of the U.S. government, which are part of the executive branch.  Administrative law consists of rules and regulations that govern activities (similar to statutes); orders and decisions from administrative courts that are created to resolve disputes that arise under rules and regulations (similar to case opinions); and Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders.  Many areas of law (e.g., tax, securities, environmental) are heavily regulated; consequently, an attorney who practices in these areas must understand how to research administrative law.

Congress gives agencies the power to create administrative law through enabling statutes, which create agencies and specify their powers.  When researching administrative law, it's often helpful to begin by reviewing the enabling statute in order to better understand the agency's purpose and scope of activities. Agencies are limited to the powers delegated to them through their enabling statutes; however, in reviewing agency actions, courts will usually give agencies wide latitude in carrying out their mission and will defer to the agency unless it acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner. 

The United States Government Manual (also available in print at JK 421 .A31) lists every U.S. administrative agency, its function, and the citation for its enabling statute. The Manual also contains a subject index to help locate agencies that regulate a particular area of law. Once you have the citation for the enabling statute, you can look it up in an annotated code volume (see "Statutes") to find the legislation itself and references to relevant primary and secondary source materials.

Administrative agencies create regulations (also called rules) that function like legislation. Like statutes, regulations are published both chronologically and by subject. The chronological arrangement of regulations is found in the Federal Register, which is available for free on GovInfo, in print at KF 70 .A2, and in HeinOnline, Bloomberg Law (from the "Regulatory Resources" page), LexisNexis, and Westlaw (from the "Browse/All Content" menu, click on "Regulations," then click on "Proposed & Adopted Regulations - Current" on the right side of the screen under "Tools and Resources"). 

Under the terms of the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. § 500 et seq.), agencies must first give notice of proposed rulemaking by publication in the Federal Register, along with a time period during which interested parties may submit comments to the agency and recommend changes to the text of the proposed rule.  After the comment period expires, the final rule is then published in the Federal Register, along with its effective date. In each proposed and final rule published in the Federal Register, there is a "Supplementary Information" section that explains the purpose of the rule, and in the case of a final rule, summaries of comments received during the comment period that indicate any changes that were made. In addition to proposed and final rules, the Federal Register also contains agency notices, presidential documents, notices of licenses issued, "Sunshine Act" meetings (pursuant to the Government in the Sunshine Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552b, "every portion of every meeting of an agency" must be open to "public observation," with obvious exceptions such as matters of national security (the CIA doesn't open its meetings to the public), and the "Unified Agenda," which is issued twice a year and summarizes the rules and proposed rules that each agency expects to issue during the year.

As with statutes, researching regulations chronologically without subject access is close to impossible. Therefore, when conducting research by subject, you will need to use the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.). In addition to being available in print (at KF 70 .A2 in the Law Library), the C.F.R. is available for free in GovInfo and in the following subscription services:

• Bloomberg Law (from the "Legislative & Regulatory" tab).
• HeinOnline's Code of Federal Regulations Library.
• LexisNexis (the C.F.R. and the C.F.R. Index are both available from this page).
• Westlaw (direct link available on the "Regulations" menu; the C.F.R. Index is available on the right side of the screen). 

Just like statutory codes, the C.F.R. is divided into "Titles" that group material on the same subject together so that, for example, all of the labor regulations are together. The C.F.R. is divided into 50 Titles, but unfortunately the titles don't always match their U.S.C. counterparts (e.g., tax law is found in Title 26 of both the U.S.C. and the CFR, but copyright law is found in Title 17 of the U.S.C. and Title 37 of the C.F.R.). C.F.R. Titles are further broken down into "Parts" (major subdivisions) and then Parts are subdivided into "Sections." 

As with statutes, using an index is the best way to access the C.F.R. Regulatory language is often highly technical and scientific, and without knowing the precise terms used by the agency, finding rules through keyword searching can be very challenging. Westlaw provides an online index with its C.F.R. materials (linked on the right side of the C.F.R. screen under "Tools & Resources"). If you need to use a print index to the C.F.R., the Index and Finding Aids to Code of Federal Regulations volume at the end of the U.S.C.S. (United States Code Service) set is more helpful than the index that accompanies the official C.F.R. set.

Comparison Chart for the C.F.R. and Federal Register

After finding the texts of relevant regulations in the C.F.R., you must be sure to update your research. Regulations are amended frequently, and you must be aware of any court decisions that interpret or overrule regulatory language. Making things even more complicated, there is an unusual quirk to the C.F.R. publication schedule. Rather than updating the entire set at once, the updates occur on a quarterly basis as follows:

• Titles 1 through 16 are updated every January 1
• Titles 17 through 27 are updated every April 1
• Titles 28 through 41 are updated every July 1
• Titles 42 through 50 are updated every October 1

In addition, the color of the C.F.R. volumes changes each year, so that when you see the print C.F.R. volumes on the shelf, you will see that not all of the volumes are the same color due to the C.F.R.'s rolling publication schedule.

You can update the text of a C.F.R. section by looking at the List of C.F.R. Sections Affected (LSA), a monthly cumulative publication available on GovInfo. According to GovInfo, the LSA "lists proposed, new, and amended Federal regulations that have been published in the Federal Register since the most recent revision date of a C.F.R. title. Each LSA issue is cumulative and contains the C.F.R. part and section numbers, a description of its status (e.g., amended, confirmed, revised), and the Federal Register page number where the change(s) may be found."

To use the LSA online:

1. Check the date of the C.F.R. volume that contains your regulation to determine the date from which you need to update.
2. On the LSA page online, click on the most recent year, then the most recent month.
3. Find the C.F.R. Title in which you are researching, then open the PDF file. If there are changes to your section, you will see a reference to the Federal Register where the change occurred.
4. Go back to the Federal Register page online and open today's Federal Register. At the back, you'll see a "List of C.F.R. Parts Affected" that is cumulative for the current month. Check to see if your C.F.R. section/part has been updated during the month. Depending on the date, you may have to go check the same list from the last Federal Register of the prior month for any changes.

Alternatively, you can use Lexis or Westlaw, which both incorporate updates to the texts of regulations much more quickly—Lexis "within two weeks of publication"; Westlaw within one week (approximately); or, the e-CFR, a regularly updated, unofficial, non-legal edition of the C.F.R. The benefit of the e-CFR is that (like Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, and Lexis), it incorporates changes to the text much more quickly than the official version of the C.F.R., plus it's free to use. The downside is that (like Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, and Lexis), it's not official so you'll want to double-check to ensure you didn't miss any changes. If you see any citations to Federal Register pages at the end of a C.F.R. section in the e-CFR, Westlaw, Bloomberg Law, or Lexis, you can use those to double-check the changes and make sure the text is correct. Be sure to check the "Data is current as of" date on the e-CFR's main page; if it's not today's date, use step 4 (above) to complete your updating.

The final step in updating is to ensure that you have found any judicial decisions that have applied, interpreted, or negatively treated the C.F.R. section in question. Unlike statutes, there is no annotated version of the C.F.R., but  it is possible to look for any such cases in both Lexis and Westlaw.

As part of its LibTour podcast series, CALI created this brief introduction to the Code of Federal Regulations. Follow the link below to the podcast.

Rule B14 (Bluepages) of The Bluebook (21st edition) covers how to cite administrative and executive materials in non-academic legal documents. This rule includes the following examples (see p. 22):

Federal rules and regulations in the C.F.R. should be cited by title, section or part, and year.

46 C.F.R. § 166.01 (2009).

In this C.F.R. citation, 46 is the title, 166 is the part, and 166.01 is the section number. The edition of the C.F.R. cited is from 2009. 

Federal Register citations should provide the commonly used name of the rule or regulation; the volume number; the page number on which the rule or regulation begins in the Federal Register; the date of the Federal Register cited. And, if known, it should indicate where the rule will be codified in the C.F.R.  For example: Federal Acquisition Regulations for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 55 Fed. Reg. 52,782 (Dec. 21, 1990) (to be codified at 48 C.F.R. pt.1).

For guidance on citing administrative rules and regulations in academic works, see rule 14 (Whitepages), which provides these citation examples (see p. 142):

Importation of Fruits and Vegetables, 60 Fed. Reg. 50,379 (Sept. 29, 1995) (to be codified at 7 C.F.R. pt. 300). 

In this example, the citation is to volume 60 of the Federal Register published on Sept. 29, 1995, page 50,379. The rule will be codified in title 7 of the C.F.R. in part 300. 

FTC Credit Practices Rule, 16 C.F.R. § 444.1 (2019).

In this example, the citation is to title 16 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 444, section 444.1. The C.F.R. edition is from 2019. 

For citing to administrative materials found in a commercial database, see rule R14.4 (Whitepages). According to that rule, "Give the name of the database and any identifying codes or numbers that uniquely identify the material. If the name of the database is not clear from the database identifier, include it parenthetically at the end of the citation" (see p. 146). The Bluebook provides this example (see p. 143).

FTC Credit Practices Rule, 16 C.F.R. § 444.1 (2000), WL 16 CFR § 444.1.