The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives 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 H. Res. 988, 93rd United States Congress, were enacted by Public Law 93-554, 88 Stat. 1777.
The counsel is appointed by the Speaker of the House 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 evidence of the statutory law but have not yet been enacted as positive law. 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 into a whole new title.
The current counsel, Ralph V. Seep, was appointed by Speaker John Boehner, effective June 2, 2011.
Famous quotes containing the words office of, office, law and/or counsel:
“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor ... over each other.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“When undertaking marriage, everyone must be the judge of his own thoughts, and take counsel from himself.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)