Congress transfers legislative authority to agencies under the delegation doctrine, which can be a broad or specific grant of power. Rulemaking is one of the main mechanisms through which agencies act. Administrative rules, also referred to interchangeably as regulations, are adopted by agencies and are considered primary legal authority.

The process of rulemaking is governed by the Administrative Procedure Act. Generally, the APA requires a process that includes publication of the proposed rules, a period for comments and participation in the decision-making, and adoption and publication of the final rule. See 5 U.S.C. § 553. This is known as "notice and comment" or "informal" rulemaking (i.e., informal in comparison with the more complex process required for laws made by Congress).

For more information on the rulemaking process, see the following titles:

Federal regulations may be located by various methods, such as the use of references in secondary sources and through cross-references from statutes to regulations in an annotated code. Individual agency websites are also generally excellent places to find their relevant regulations and proposed regulations. In addition, several reliable online sources can be searched in various ways. These sources include Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis, Westlaw, and FDsys. The federal government has also created Regulations.gov, a Web portal for agencies' rulemaking documents, including proposed rules and text of public comments.

Indexes and Compilations

The official print index to CFR, Index and Finding Aids, is limited in the subjects it uses and works best when you already know the agency that administers the regulations. The Index and Finding Aids volume also contains a Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules that can be used to find regulations using a statute. The list is not comprehensive, however.

The database ProQuest Regulatory Insight offers detailed indexing and searching of the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, as well as compiled regulatory history materials related to enacted federal laws. Currently, the database covers the time period 2001-2015, but will be expanded back to 1936 over the next year.

For historical regulatory research, the print CIS Index to the Code of Federal Regulations (available from 1986-2001 in the Law Library's Microform collection on Level 1) provides highly detailed indexing. However, this source is no longer published.

Statute to Regulation

To find what regulations have been promulgated under a specific U.S. Code or Statutes at Large section, use 'Table 1 - Authorities' in the Finding Aids section of the CFR Index and Finding Aids volume, or the "Search by Number" feature of ProQuest Regulatory Insight. Annotated codes, such as the U.S.C.A. or U.S.C.S., will also provide citations to relevant regulations. Note that these sources are not comprehensive lists.

Commercial Electronic Services

Regulations on specific topics (such as tax, banking, or securities) can be found in looseleaf and electronic services, which the Goodson Law Library receives primarily in electronic format. These services are generally updated weekly or bi-weekly. Regulations are well-indexed and integrated with other materials on the same topic. CCH services are available to current Duke students, faculty and staff through IntelliConnect. Publications from Bloomberg BNA are available through Bloomberg BNA or through Bloomberg Law.

The Federal Register (F.R.) has been the official daily publication of the executive branch since 1936. It includes a variety of information about agency activities (such as notices, meetings, proposed and final regulations, and Presidential executive orders and proclamations). Proposed and final regulations are accompanied by extensive explanation and background about the purpose of the action and the comments received. This information is often useful in interpreting regulations, in the same way that legislative history is used to interpret statutes. For help with using the Federal Register, visit the National Archives’ tutorial page The Federal Register: What It Is and How to Use It.

The Federal Register may be found in the library at the following locations.

The full text of the Federal Register may be found electronically through a variety of sources. Resources marked with an asterisk (*) are available only to current members of the Duke Law community.

Daily Updates

The Office of the Federal Register publishes the next day's F.R. contents on the Public Inspection Desk, arranged by agency.

Many lawyers rely on a daily table of contents from the F.R. to track agency activity. The Government Printing Office (GPO) supplies the table of contents through a listserv.

Westlaw, Lexis Advance and Bloomberg Law also offer alert setup services, to aid researchers by periodically re-running searches for specific search terms.

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the annual codification of the final rules published in the Federal Register. The CFR is divided into 50 titles that represent broad subject areas. Title 3 of the CFR contains presidential proclamations, executive orders, and other presidential documents that are required to be published in the Federal Register. Each title is revised once a year officially; the cover of each print booklet indicates the date of last revision. Electronic versions are updated more frequently, as described below.

The Goodson Law Library owns a full set of the Code of Federal Regulations, dating back to its inception in 1938. The current CFR is located in the Federal Alcove (Level 3). Superseded volumes are on Level 1 in the Government Documents collection (Doc. AE 2.106/3). Note: All volumes of Title 3 (Presidential materials), whether current or superseded, are located in the Federal Alcove on Level 3. See section VII of this guide for more information.

FDsys provides the official CFR from 1996 to date in a searchable and browseable format. GPO also provides an unofficial, but more current, version called e-CFR.

For historical versions of the CFR, HeinOnline's Code of Federal Regulations library has all volumes and supplements in PDF from 1938-present.

ProQuest Regulatory Insight includes the text of the CFR back to 1997; this database will expand full-text coverage to 1938 over the next year. Electronic versions of the CFR can also be found on Lexis.com and Westlaw, beginning in the early 1980s. (Westlaw excludes the Executive Orders and other presidential documents, but provides them in the separate PRES database.) The CFR may be searched across all years, or in individual years. Bloomberg Law and Lexis Advance include only the current year's edition of the CFR.

Predicting future proposed regulations can be assisted with the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (also known as the Semiannual Regulatory Agenda), a biennial update of planned rules for each agency, along with their justifications and expected timetables. From 1983-2007, the entire Unified Agenda was published twice a year in the Federal Register, usually in April and October. Beginning in fall 2007, the Unified Agenda became a primarily web-based publication, available at the Regulatory Information Service Center. The Federal Register version of the Unified Agenda now contains only "rules which are likely to have a significant economic impact" as well as rules which are required for inclusion by statute. Historic issues of the Agenda are available in HeinOnline's Federal Register Library (from 1983, via Federal Register printings); FDsys (from 1994); and RegInfo.gov (from 1995).

A number of sources allow users to track pending agency regulations, and simplify the comment process. Regulations.Gov is the federal government's centralized site for online access to proposed and final regulations, and submission and review of public comments. RegInfo.Gov provides various breakdowns of pending agency action, allowing users to view pending actions by rule stage or by agency. Justia offers a Regulation Tracker which allows searching and updating (via RSS feeds) of regulations from 2005 – present.

Updating changes to final regulations is also greatly simplified online, since electronic versions of the CFR are continuously updated. The most current version of the CFR is the unofficial e-CFR, which incorporates new amendments within 1 to 2 days. On LexisNexis and Westlaw, the CFR databases are updated to incorporate changes within 2 weeks. Westlaw also links to pending changes in the Federal Register using the KeyCite feature.

In print, the traditional way to update the CFR is to use the List of CFR Sections Affected (LSA). This publication provides citations to the Federal Register for any changes since the last annual update of the CFR title. LSA is issued monthly and cumulates annually. You will also find a list in the Federal Register issued on the last day of each month: CFR Parts Affected in this Issue. LSA can be used to track the history of changes to a regulation over time. Each CFR volume also contains a table in the back noting repeals, amendments, renumbering and transfers of regulations. LSA is available electronically from FDsys for the years 1997 forward. HeinOnline’s Federal Register library includes LSA issues as well.