Positive Law
The United States Code is an organized compilation of federal statutes, arranged by subject matter rather than chronological order of enactment. The Code is not, by default, the law itself — it is a publication of the law. The actual law lives in the Statutes at Large, which records each public law in the form Congress enacted it.
1 U.S.C. § 204(a) states the rule:
“The matter set forth in the edition of the Code of Laws of the United States current at any time shall, together with the then current supplement, if any, establish prima facie the laws of the United States … Provided, however, That whenever titles of such Code shall have been enacted into positive law the text thereof shall be legal evidence of the laws therein contained, in all the courts of the United States, the several States, and the Territories and insular possessions of the United States.”
The distinction has a precise legal consequence. For non-positive-law titles, if the Code text and the underlying Statutes-at-Large text diverge, the Statutes at Large control — the Code is prima facie evidence, presumptively correct but rebuttable. For titles that Congress has enacted into positive law, the Code text is the law; the Statutes at Large may inform interpretation but the Code text controls.
Twenty-seven of the U.S. Code’s titles are currently positive law, roughly half. The Office of the Law Revision Counsel maintains the official list and updates it as new codification statutes are passed. Notable titles that are positive law include Title 5 (Government Organization and Employees), Title 11 (Bankruptcy), and Title 18 (Crimes). Notable titles that are not on the OLRC’s positive-law list include Title 26 (Internal Revenue) and Title 42 (Public Health and Welfare).
The practical analytical implication: when a claim rests on Code text in a non-positive-law title, careful work checks the underlying public laws to confirm the Code accurately reflects them. The discrepancy is usually small — the OLRC does conscientious editorial work — but the discrepancy is what the prima facie qualifier preserves the right to litigate over. For positive-law titles, this concern is closed.
This is the first of the four lenses in the methodology: Is the cited authority positive law, or only prima facie evidence? Does the distinction matter here? Most of the time it does not. When it does, it can be dispositive.