I'm told that, last month (January 2011), Congress "recodified" the United States Code, and that this affects the Public Contracts section, Title 41.

Can anybody shed any light on this? The most info I could find on this is in a footnote to case:

The FAR is codified in Title 48 of the United States Code of Federal Regulations. It is issued pursuant to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act of 1974 (Pub. L. 93-400 and Title 41 of the United States Code), Chapter 7.

?On January 4, 2011?Congress altered the provisions of the CDA?. The session laws reflecting the alterations also note that the CDA will be recodified. See Act of Jan. 4, 2011, Pub. L. No. 111-350, ? 3, 124 Stat. 3677, 3816-26. Accordingly, the provisions of the CDA formerly listed in the U.S. Code at 41 U.S.C. ?? 601-613 will be listed at 41 U.S.C. ?? 7101-7109.?

Found in footnote 1 at -

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldo...LWAR3-2007-CURR.

The opinion was dated 2/25/11 and recodification does not appear finalized as the court states that ? ?We cite to the session laws and note the expected codification section of the U.S. Code because recodification was not finalized at the time of this Opinion.?

Yes, that's generally correct, though Congress did not re-codify all of the U.S. Code, just title 41, which deals with contracts.

The law that did this is Public Law 111-350, effective January 4, 2011. It is not yet available on GPOAccess or the Library of Congress site. It is available on Westlaw, if you have access to that.

The re-codification is not supposed to make any substantive changes to the law, just organize it better.

The didn't recodify it. They reorganized Title 41 and enacted it into positive law. Earlier versions of its provisions have been repealed. However, there was no intent to change the substance of any law.

The FAR will have to be changed to reflect the changes in citations.

Hi Govt2310. Just want to put in my two cents about your question in case it helps anyone to understand the issue. Legislation enacted by Congress is initially contained in the Statutes at Large. These are compilations of enacted statutes organized by date of enactment. Recodification is the process of taking the laws and arranging them by subject matter and incorporating them into the United States Code (U.S.C.). During recodification there can be amendments and corrections to remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections, but none of these changes are intended to make any substantive change to the law, as Vern indicates above. Once a recodification is enacted, it transforms the enacted title into "positive law", which means that the appropriate section of the U.S.C. can be cited instead of having to refer back to the Statutes at Large as evidence of the law.

Be aware that the U.S.C. is different than the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations. The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations is the compilation of regulations adopted by various governmental entities that implement provisions of statutes. So, U.S.C. refers to statutes, and CFR refers to regulations.The FAR is part of the CFR. The CDA (Contract Disputes Act) is a statute (now recodified in the U.S.C.) which is referenced in the FAR.

[Preface - Yes, this is old.] Any idea when the FAR will be updated to reflect the changes to 41 U.S.C.?