The following resources are freely available on the Internet and provide various formats and levels of access to the Public and Private Laws of the United States.

• Public and Private Laws from GPO Access contains the text of public and private laws enacted from the 104th (1995-96) Congress to present. The database is updated when the publication of a slip law is authorized by the Office of the Federal Register. The database is browseable or searchable and documents are available as ASCII text or PDF files.

• Public Laws from Thomas also provides links to public laws via GPO Access. Thomas provides additional information such as the bill number, the sponsor, cosponsors, the date the bill was introduced, and links to some of the reports.

• GPO-PLAWS is a listserv from GPOLISTSERV. When you sign up, you will be sent lists via e-mail of new public and private laws as they become available. Links to the full text of the law in either ASCII text or PDF files should be provide for the laws. To sign up, click on the link above, select "Online mailing list archives," then select "GPO-PLAWS-L," and finally select "Join or leave the list." You also have the option of searching or browsing the archive.

• Statutes at Large from the Library of Congress, "A Century of Law Making for a New Nation", covers the laws of the first forty-three Congresses, 1789-1875. The eighteen volumes in this online collection are both browseable and searchable.

Note: For access to the text of Public Laws via Westlaw, go to US-PL (current) or US-PL-OLD (historical from 1973) or USCCAN-PL (from 1973). For access to the text of Public Laws via Lexis, the Library is CODES or GENFED and the File is PUBLAW.