grthumongous --
The symbol is the standard designation for "section" in federal and
state legislation.
Here are links to a couple of good sources, among many others, for
that piece of information:
"Citations to statutes and regulations look similar to case citations,
but you interpret them differently. A statutory or regulatory citation
includes a title or chapter number, an abbreviation for the code in
which the law appears, a section number, and, in parentheses, the
publication date of the code. The name of the law or regulation may be
included at the beginning of the citation.
Example: Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act of 1998, 15 USC
§ 6501 et seq. (2000).
Name of the law: Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act of 1998
Title number: 15
Abbreviated title of the code: USC, represents the United States Code
Section number: 6501; the "§" symbol stands for "section"; "et seq."
stands for "and the sections following"
Year: 2000"
U. of Washington: Legal Research Sources for Law in the Digital Age
http://lib.law.washington.edu/ref/digilaw.html
A New Hampshire attorney has taken the time to create a handy citation
guide based on the standard "Blue Book" (which is not available
online). Here is the very brief relevant excerpt:
"§ section number
There is one blank space between the section symbol and the number. , , ,
It is conventional to denote subsections with lower-case letters of
the alphabet. The second sublevel of organization uses numbers. The
third sublevel uses upper-case letters. The fourth sublevel uses
lower-case roman numerals. Enclose each level of organization in
separate parentheses. For example:
17 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)."
Legal Research and Citation Style in USA, by Ronald M. Standler
http://www.rbs0.com/lawcite.htm#anchor333333
Search Strategy:
Since I have legal training, I knew the answer to the question, so I
spent my research time looking for some good sources, so that you
wouldn't have to take my word for it.
Here are two of the searches I used, among others:
statute symbol section
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=+statute+symbol+section
law "stands for section"
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=+law++%22stands+for+section%22
I am very confident that this is the correct answer, but if anything
is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating it.
markj-ga |
