Customs Chapter in US Code Will Be Reorganized
The Customs chapter in the U.S. Code, Title 19, will be reorganized by subject matter, not chronologically, the Office of Law Revision Counsel recently announced. Title 19 appeared in 1926, and has 30 chapters. “The new Title 19 -- renamed as Customs and International Trade -- will enable general and permanent laws related to customs and international trade to be better organized and maintained," the Office of Law Revision Counsel said on its website. "Using an act-centric organization framework, the structure of the new title reflects the structure of included acts where possible.”
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"The current Title 19 lacks internal organization among its chapters apart from chronological order without regard to subject matter," the agency said. "This arrangement of material does not reflect the way that statutory law has developed since the initial publication of the Code, particularly with respect to the increased importance of laws relating to international trade."
The reclassification will be online in the spring, Law Revision Counsel Ralph Seep said in an email. It will be included in Supplement III to the code's 2018 printed edition. However, export control will remain in Title 22 and Title 50, and organizational matters related to CBP in Title 6. An outline of the reorganized Title 19 is available on the Office of Law Revision Counsel's website, as is a table showing the planned new location of existing statutes.