Codification

December 4, 2009

All the laws are codified and codification is about laws. Ancient Babylon first codified its laws in 1760 BC and it was considered as the earliest civil code. Roman empire developed some of the important codifications and there was a religious law called as Torah.


The first code of law was found in China in CE 624 and these were considered to be the Chinese criminal code. After the establishment of Republic of China, the new laws were introduced under the inspiration of German code. Hindu law was first framed by Manu and also called as Manu Smriti. Islamic law called as Sharia law began from Ottoman Empire. Common law is codified in many jurisdictions and in English law. Civil laws contain codification in several jurisdictions and the movement of codification gained a great significance after the Napoleon Code in 1804. Most of the enactment of laws are divided into public law and private law. Each Congressional act has several laws and there are many variety of topics and the official codification is called as United States Code.

Topics numbering from 1 to 50, United States Code is divided into titles. For example title 18 details about Federal criminal statutes and Title 26 details about Internal Revenue Code. Evasion of taxes is a crime under tax law and it is found in Internal Revenue Code.

Congressional acts have effective dates for the amendments to codified laws and these are referred as slip law, session and codification which is a three part model followed by private commercial publishers. Therefore, United States has a set of laws for every state and statutes are published separately for each and every topic. Recodification refers to the modification of existing codes or statutes and these are either rewritten or formatted again into a new codified format.

As more and more statutes are introduced into the United States code of law, there would be more codification and there is more increase on the terms of text. Therefore, recodification is necessary in order to modify the existing structure and also to re-write the present code of law or codification. As this is the highest of all jobs, there is requirement of high expertise level for codification as there is a vast requirement of analysis and technical expertise apart from a thorough legal knowledge. Only those who are proficient with U.S. laws, titles, topics and codes can have easy access and knowledge to understand about the present statute and future requirement of statute.


Therefore, whether it is Internal Revenue Code or Internal Revenue Service, each set of codification has to be studied thoroughly before carrying on any modifications or recodification to the statutes. Laws are very important for government as well to citizens with the fact that laws when complied give an assurance that citizens are law abiding and there are no problems with the set of codes and laws.
Codification is a very important aspect in the matters of U.S laws and of prime most significance at all levels.

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Written by Uncle Sam · Filed Under Legal 

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