Bibliography of Congressional Acts and Presidential Executive Orders and Proclamations Relating to General Use of the United States Flag

Abstract

Since its birth in the Continental Congress in 1777, the flag of the United States has been the subject of numerous acts of the Congress and President. On rare occa sions, such as the flag desecration case of United States v. Eichman , those acts have been reviewed by the Supreme Court. This bibliography attempts to identity, cite, and summarize the congressional acts and presidential executive orders and proclamations relating to the general use of the United States flag. Specific acts, such as annual presidential proclamations for Columbus Day, Flag Day, et cetera, are beyond the scope of this work, as are treaties and other international acts of the United States relating to the flag. The bibliogra phy incorporates the August 1998 reorganization of the Flag Code and other flagrelated laws in title 36 of the United States Code . While some acts may have been omitted due to the vagaries of the indexing process in available legal references, every effort has been made to make this bibli ography as accurate and complete as possible. Each item provides a full session-law citation so that scholars with access to a law library may find and study the primary source material at each step of its enactment. Whenever possible, a citation is given to the current text in the United States Code , i.e., (codified at 4 U.S.C. § 1), which is the most readily available source. Because of the exclusive reliance on legal material, the citations follow the for mat of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation , rather than The Chicago Manual of Style. A full explanation of the applicable Bluebookconventions is well beyond the scope of this work, but the following explanation of abbreviations should prove helpful: