Federal Rules

About Federal Rules

All Rules

It is a relatively simple concept: Federal rules are based on federal laws - a regulation does not get put into place by a federal agency without legislative authorization. Federal laws require the approval of both houses of the Congress and the approval of President.

Two primers on how laws are made or enacted can be found here and here.

The federal laws are available to the public as the United States Code, as the Statutes at Large, or as Slip Laws. The United States Code is comprised of 50 separate titles and generally excludes the enacting language found in most bills that become enacted into law. The 50 separate titles are generalized grouping of laws based on subject matter.

Title 30 of the United States Code is the codification of most of the laws that affect mineral lands or mining. Title 30 has not yet been enacted into positive law and thus many of the federal mineral laws are found in the Statutes at Large. In the case of some of the older mineral laws affecting federal mineral lands and mineral resources the laws are found in the Revised Statutes published in 1878.

Only a relatively small set of the laws within Title 30 directly regulate the activities of citizens or businesses on any mineral-bearing lands without regard to ownership. Those laws are generally related to control of coal fires, mine safety and health, and surface mined coal reclamation. Additional laws that establish the authority for regulating mineral operations on national forest lands or within the national parks are found in Title 16.

Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)

The CFR is divided into 50 titles that represent broad areas subject to Federal regulation. The CFR is the official federal publication for the rules administered by the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government. Each printed volume of the CFR is updated once each calendar year. Most of the federal government's printed regulations are available through the Government Printing Office.

Because the CFR volumes are only published once a year, they do not contain any amendments or updates or new rule provisions. These are published in Federal Register which is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. The issues of the Federal Register from 1998 to the present can be browsed in either HTML or PDF formats.

Some federal rules will be undergoing continual revision and thus they will become somewhat of a moving target. To address the problem, the GPO maintains a website that contains an up-to-date version of the CFR (this website is not the official regulation, but it will give you the most recent changes in regulation in their context).