I don't know if the US is the same, but here, the laws deal with the thou shalts and shalt nots and the regulations deal with the administrative requirements that fufill the shalls and shan'ts.

Is it that the Code covers the specific laws that have been passed by Congress, and that the CFR takes that as a basis and then creates federal regulations?

Yes. In the index to the CFR there's a table that tells you where the authority is (in the USC) that gave the agency the right to make regulations on a certain subject.

They shouldn't conflict, should they?

They shouldn't. I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if there was an instance where the agency's interpretation seemed wrong.

Um, how does one do that? "Hey, kid, wanna neglect some words? all the cool kids are doing that!" sort of thing?

Well, give us a little credit; that's not much of a trick.

Penn & Teller have done a mind-reading act with the Bible, though. Maybe it's like that. Or, I dunno, pulling Leviticus out of a hat.

Okay, got it. Thanks, everyone whose name starts with S. (Sparky, Stephanie, Sue.)

Dana, Stephanie, Sue and Sparky1 are of course correct. The US Code stuff passed by Congress establishes what the law is, and among other things gives the agencies power to pass regulations to help enforce/promote the law, while the CFR regulations fill in the details on how the law is implemented.

If there is a conflict (and it happens a fair bit), the US Code wins. That usually takes a court case though.

eta: Too late. Never mind.

Too late. Never mind.

No, no, more information is never bad.

If there is a conflict (and it happens a fair bit), the US Code wins. That usually takes a court case though.

I think it's not that there was a conflict in my case, but that I was expecting information to be in the U.S. Code which is only in the CFR. Which makes sense now that I understand which is which and what does what.

Which makes sense now that I understand which is which and what does what.

That last part puts you ahead of many many lawyers.

Oh, and just because I like to really beat a subject to death, I use the Immigration parts of the USC and CFR every day. I generally think of the USC part as the overarching guideline. It's also the authority we quote whenever we approve/deny something. However, the CFR addresses the nitty gritty procedural stuff and, as already mentioned, it can be changed by our agency. So, if we don't like the way something is working, we can change it.

That last part puts you ahead of many many lawyers.

So true. We had a guy here last month who spent a week in the federal prison here because he got bad advice from his lawyer. The lawyer obviously hadn't read the CFR and made a wrong assmption. (Guy is now back at home in Virginia with his wife.)

The easy course at my college was Music Theory, aka Clapping for Credit. I took it freshman year, and got a really easy A -- I already knew how to read music, and I'd been in school band for long enough that I could identify most instruments by ear (or, at least, be able to say "That's a brass" or "That's a woodwind" or whatever, which was all that was required.) Learned a few new things, like the circle of fifths, but overall, I don't think I put more than about 30 minutes a week into homework and studying for that class.

My worst "entitled student" story is the girl who insisted she didn't deserve a D on her calculus test, because she "studied really hard" and she's "a good student." She was furious, and was practically screaming at the TA. She didn't have any argument about any of her answers that were marked wrong being actually correct, or anything like that -- it wasn't her answers that deserved a higher grade, it was her.