Title 46, United States Code Section 8501

Compiled January 2009

Our review of the annotated history for Title 46, United States Code section 8501 reveals the following legislative history.  Each public law (hereinafter referred to as Pub.L.) represents a separate congressional enactment or bill.

Added: Pub.L. 98-89 (1984)
Amended: Pub.L. 98-557 (1984) [nonsubstantive amdt]
The historical derivation of current section 8501 are former sections 211 through 215.  We were able to locate a 1981 superseded United States Codebook, which provided the following history for these superseded sections:
•  Former § 211 (current § 8501(a)): 1928, c. 728 (May 24, 1928) [45 Stat. 728]; 1941, c. 354 (August 16, 1941) [55 Stat. 621]
•  Former § 212 (current § 8501(b)): 1928, c. 728 (May 24, 1928) [45 Stat. 728]; 1938, c. 601 (June 23, 1938) [52 Stat. 1027]; Pub. L. 85-726 (1958), 72 Stat. 806
•  Former § 213 (current § 8501(c), (e)): 1928, c. 728 (May 24, 1928) [45 Stat. 728]
•  Former § 214 repealed in 1976 – may not be relevant to current § 8501
•  Former § 215 (current § 8501(d)): Unable to locate a superseded codebook containing this language and history.  Will assume that there is only one Public Law between 1981 and the 1984 enactment of § 8501 that added this former section.

Five public laws affected your section of interest.

Tracing Statutory Language:

  • Research fees can be minimized by ordering only the bills that affected specific subdivisions or phrases of interest to you.
  • Changes to statutes can sometimes be determined by annotations.
  • If annotations are not available, one strategy is to look at each public law noted above to observe the changes.   Another strategy is to retain us to trace your language and report our findings back to you.  We charge a research fee to trace.  Please contact our office to learn about our fees.

We appreciate the opportunity to provide this assistance.  If you would like to order the legislative history of this or any other federal statute, please feel free to Contact us.

Since 1974, Legislative Intent Service, Inc. has provided the legislative and regulatory history for all federal bills and regulations.