After each section of the code you will find a reference to the Statutes at Large that contains your statutory language. For instance, in the U.S.C.A. pocket part after Section 2244 you will see the following:

(As amended April 24, 1996, Pub.L. 104-132, Title I, §§ 101, 106, 110 Stat. 1217, 1220.)

This citation refers to the same content in two different forms. The first citation is to the slip law version of the statute:

Pub.L. 104-132, Title I, §§ 101, 106

Laws passed by Congress are first published in the form of a slip law. This is a printing of the law by itself. Some are very small and are only a few slips of paper wide (hence, the name ‘slip law’). Pub. L. 104-132 is the 132nd law passed by the 104^th Congress. In other words, it was proceeded by 131 other laws passed by the 104^th Congress and followed by many more. In time, all of the individual slip laws are collected and published chronologically in a set of books known as the Statutes at Large. This is the meaning of the second part of the citation:

110 Stat. 1217, 1220

The language of our statutory provision appears on page 1220 of the 110th volume of the Statutes at Large. Note also that our citation is a pinpoint citation. This means that while the language of the statute in which we are interested appears on page 1220 of the Statutes at Large, the first part of the law in its entirety begins on page 1217.

As to our problem, this is not the only session law language that is applicable. You would also track down the other Statutes at Large citations in the ‘Historical and Statutory Notes’ (U.S.C.A.) or ‘History; Ancillary Laws and Directives’ (U.S.C.S.) portion of the annotations in the annotated code. The session law versions of the statutes will allow your assigning attorney to determine what language was added at what particular time, and to see the language of each particular amendment in the context in which it was passed. For instance, if you look up the session law version of the 1996 amendment to our statute, you will learn that the amendment was enacted as part of the “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.”

Similarly, on the margins of the pages of the Statutes at Large, you should find the location of where particular portions of a statute ended up in the United States Code. (Note: This is not true for our particular statute because Section 106 of the “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 makes it explicitly clear that it is amending Title 28, Sections 2244(a) and 2244(b) of the U.S. Code.)