Why are some sections of the US Code formatted so weirdly? There are actually two questions here. First, why are sections not in order? You have 28 USC §1 through §6, which talk about the Supreme Court, then you have §41 to §49 (appeals courts), then §81 to §144 (district courts) immediately afterwards. Why is this? Does Congress do this sort of thing to emphasize the &quot;separation&quot; between the types of definitions, or is it just the case that they're &quot;reserving&quot; numbers in case they need to add something (like §40 before §41)? Other examples of this: 17 USC §101 through §122, followed immediately by §201 to §205; 22 USC § 1 through §136, followed immediately by §141 to §183; 18 USC § 2381 through § 2391, followed immediately by § 2421 to § 2429. 51 USC § 10101 followed by § 20101, &quot;implying&quot; they skipped 10,100 sections (except they didn't). Second, why do certain portions of the US Code look like, well, these oddly listed names? Did Congress just run out of numbers or were they trying to &quot;squeeze an entirely new section&quot; in but couldn't quite make it? 16 USC §470x-6, § 470aaa, § 590z-11, §668ss 15 USC §77bbbb, 79z-6, 80b-21 22 USC §2799aa-2 42 USC §300mm-62, 1397mm, 2000aa-5, 2000bb-4, 2000gg-6 To me the US Code looks like, well, spaghetti code. And I know lawyers are the ones who look at it and I think they probably couldn't care less about how it looks as long as the law is there, but I'm just curious as to why they opted for the approach of sticking random letters on some of the numbers.
Many of the titles in the U.S. Code are not positive codifications. Instead they are consolidations, classifications, and editorial codifications made by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Title 42 (noted in phoog's answer) is not a positive codification. This means Congress did not choose its numbering scheme. Only the titles with an asterisk on this page have been enacted as positive law. Instead, the law codified into Title 42 are the various public statutes passed by Congress over the years that the Law Revision Counsel has included in Title 42. It is the public statutes that have the force of law. See e.g. Pub. L. 98-183, whose elements the Law Revision Counsel put in Chapter 20A of Title 42. The Law Revision Counsel says: Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare, is a non-positive law title. Title 42 is comprised of many individually enacted Federal statutes––such as the Public Health Service Act and the Social Security Act––that have been editorially compiled and organized into the title, but the title itself has not been enacted. Whether a provision of a public statute is included in the U.S. Code and where it will be included is determined by the Law Revision Counsel, although placement may be obvious when a statute amends an already codified statute. As for the cramped numbering (contrary to the comment of Weather Vane, which says that insertions would require renumbering of subsequent clauses), the Law Revision Counsel says: Chapters based on statutes that have been amended many times may have cumbersome numbering schemes with section numbers such as 16 U.S.C. 460zzz-7 and 42 U.S.C. 300ff-111. Where the U.S. Code skips over large portions of section numbers this could be an intentional decision to leave room for growth, especially in a title that has undergone positive codification process through Congress, or it could be the result of previous sections that have been removed after repeal. For more background, see the detailed guide from the Law Revision Counsel.
In the example given, both elements must be established. This is the most common meaning of the word &quot;and&quot; in a statute or rule or contract or other writing, but there are times when &quot;and&quot; does not have that meaning. One must always determine the meaning from context on a case by case basis. Words do not have a single universal meaning in all contexts for legal purposes. This variation by context in the meaning of words for legal purposes is especially frequent in countries with common law legal systems based upon the English legal system such as the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and India to have situations where a word often means one thing in one legal context and another thing in different legal contexts. This is because the governing statutes and case law are written on a piecemeal basis by many different people with no one in charge of maintaining stylistic uniformity, over a very long period of time (often centuries). In countries like those of Continental Europe, Latin America and much of Asia and Africa, which have what are called &quot;civil law&quot; systems, that are based on European civil codes, there are comprehensive codifications of the basic laws of the land that are drafted by experts all at the same time, and amended only with great deliberation and care, and these codes tend to use a word more consistently in most contexts than common law legislatures and judges do, although even then, this principle is not absolute.
Certain elements of the flag's design are specified by statute, namely 4 USC 1-2: §1 The flag of the United States shall be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the flag shall be forty-eight stars, white in a blue field. §2 On the admission of a new State into the Union one star shall be added to the union of the flag; and such addition shall take effect on the fourth day of July then next succeeding such admission. The rest of the design is specified by executive order (EO 10834, to be precise). I won't quote the whole thing here, because it's rather heavy on detail, but it includes a couple of tables and a detailed diagram specifying the dimensions of the flag and the arrangement of the stars. The president can change anything that has been specified by executive order, and can specify additional details that haven't been specified, as long as nothing in the president's order contradicts the statute. Congress can add additional details to the statutory specifications, in which case the president's orders might have to be modified to comply.
It stands for section. As in "section 8 article b" or whatever.
See this working paper by Silvia Ferreri for an excellent write-up of this issue. The key point is that because each linguistic version of legislation is equally authentic, none can be taken as the authentic version. The court then resolves this by applying two principles: comparing the linguistic versions and giving deference to legislative intent. This is necessarily a case-by-case analysis. The paper calls attention to Case C‑445/09 arising from the Netherlands, where 9 different linguistic versions are compared and shows that the straightforward Dutch reading of the legislation in question isn't compatible with the other linguistic versions or legislative intent. In paragraph 25, the decision also contains a concise summary of the general principle of interpreting laws in multiple languages: According to settled case-law, the need for uniform application and, accordingly, for uniform interpretation of an EU measure makes it impossible to consider one version of the text in isolation, but requires that it be interpreted on the basis of both the real intention of its author and the aim which the latter seeks to achieve, in the light, in particular, of the versions in all languages (see, inter alia, Case 29/69 Stauder [1969] ECR 419, paragraph 3; Joined Cases C‑261/08 and C‑348/08 Zurita García and Choque Cabrera [2009] ECR I‑10143, paragraph 54; and Case C‑473/08 Eulitz [2010] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 22).
As far as I can tell, whenever GitHub redistributes code, it adheres to all of the requirements of the GPL/BSD etc. For example, it never gives away code without including the license text, and it doesn't claim to add unpermitted restrictions to the code. The section you're concerned about is this: That means you're giving us the right to do things like reproduce your content (so we can do things like copy it to our database and make backups); display it (so we can do things like show it to you and other users); modify it (so our server can do things like parse it into a search index); distribute it (so we can do things like share it with other users); and perform it (in case your content is something like music or video). That section isn't worded very precisely, but I understand this to mean they want to reproduce your content in full, not just the code without the license text attached. They want to display your content in full, as you provided it. They want to modify it internally (i.e. they are not redistributing this modified form) in order to allow searching. To the extent that they display code-snippets as search results, that is likely defensible as fair use (search engines are frequently cited as examples of successful fair use defenses). GitHub appears to be acting consistently with the GPL when it reproduces, displays, modifies, and distributes code that you upload. If I'm correct about these facts then nothing that GitHub does with the code goes beyond what the many contributors to a GPL project have explicitly permitted, or what is otherwise permitted by fair use law. If you had some code with a more restrictive license, you might not be able to simultaneously comply with that restrictive license and GitHub's License Grant. Consider the scenario where you have some code that is licensed exclusively to you, and you are not given permission to reproduce or distribute it. In that scenario, the code's license prevents you from agreeing to GitHub's request for a license grant.
The answer by Dale M is basically correct but has some details wrong. US Courts of Appeal Recall that in the US Federal system the circuit courts are the &quot;Courts of Appeal&quot;, that is the middle level of the system, above the district courts, but below the Supreme Court. In the early days of the US, each Justice of the Supreme Court was assigned to one circuit, usually consisting of several adjacent states. The Justice spent roughly half of each year &quot;riding circuit&quot;. The Justice would stop at two to four places in the circuit, where Federal district courts were located.The justice would sit together with one of the district court judges in those places, in the courthouse that would be otherwise used for the district court. That Two-judge panel would constitute the session of the Circuit Court. The places where the circuit court was held were usually state capitols or other large towns or cities. The Justice would not stop at every small town along the way. (I recently read The Marshall Court and Cultural Change: 1815-1835, Which describes the practice in detail. Travel was quite wearing on the Justices. During the actual Supreme Court term, they lived in a boardinghouse in Washington DC, usually the same house for all the Justices. Cases were often discussed after hours at these boardinghouses. The Chief Justice often made arrangements for the coming year's accommodation. The Justices' wives did not normally join them in Washington nor on circuit.) This practice persisted until 1912, but had ceased by the early twentieth century. It stopped in some Circuits sooner than others. There are now permanent judges assigned to the Courts of Appeal, which is now their proper formal name, but the areas over which they have jurisdiction are still known as circuits, and the courts are informally still called the Circuit courts. In fact the judges of the Courts of appeal are often where Presidents look when there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Each circuit still has a supervising Justice assigned to it. That Justice handles certain &quot;emergency&quot; appeals from the circuit court, either ruling on them at once, or relaying them to the full Supreme Court. English Assize Circuits In England, before the US existed, judges rode circuit. These assize circuits were defined by statute in 1293, and remained in use until they were replaced by the Crown Court in 1972 under the Courts Act 1971 Western US In the West and Mid-west of the US during the nineteenth century, some state courts (not federal courts) rode circuit in areas where the population was not dense enough to support a full time stationary court. The Judge was often accompanied by a group of lawyers, whom would take on the various cases that awaited the judge. However, these courts are not what is usually meant by &quot;circuit courts&quot; in US usage. These judges did often stop at a relatively large number of small towns, often county seats or comparable locations, where a county courthouse might exist. This practice stopped at different times in different areas, but it was obsolete by the early twentieth century.
The already existing rule 11 penalizes baseless litigation. The modifications in this bill makes sanctions obligatory rather than optional, removes escapes for what would be sanctionable actions, and expands the range of sanctions. The clause in question strikes me as redundant, because existing rule 11(b)(2) says of the action that (2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law; Without either of these clauses, sanctions could be imposed on a bright guy who comes up with a new legal argument that actually works, which I think is clearly contrary to the intent of the original rule. Such a clause is a way of telling the courts "No, that is not the legislative intent". But the existing rule already covers that outcome. It may be that the added sanction "striking the pleadings, dismissing the suit, or other directives of a non-monetary nature..." was thought to potentially threaten "creative lawyering", but again that seems to be already covered by 11(b)(2). The words "assertion or development of new claims, defenses, or remedies under Federal, State, or local laws, including civil rights laws, or under the Constitution of the United States" differ from "nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law", but they seem to describe the same kind of facts. Perhaps a historical reading of the various versions since 1983, especially related to the advisory committee notes, would reveal more precisely why this is necessary.