Home » post » Part 16: Nonlawyer’s journey through Title 44: Blank Forms

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Part 16: Nonlawyer’s journey through Title 44: Blank Forms

This post, all earlier postings in this series, and my “not a lawyer” disclaimer can be found at http://freegovinfo.info/title44 or through our library under Nonlawyer’s Journey through Title 44.

44 USC 1709:

TITLE 44–PUBLIC PRINTING AND DOCUMENTS

CHAPTER 17–DISTRIBUTION AND SALE OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS

Sec. 1709. Blank forms: printing and sale to public

The Public Printer may print for sale by the Superintendent of Documents to the public, upon prepayment, additional copies of approved Government blank forms.

(Pub. L. 90-620, Oct. 22, 1968, 82 Stat. 1280.)

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on 44 U.S. Code, 1964 ed., Sec. 94 (June 7, 1924, ch. 303,
Sec. 1, 43 Stat. 592).

I really don’t have too much to say about this section of Title 44 other than to marvel that it took an Act of Congress to empower the Government Printing Office to sell blank government forms. You could say that this section of law symbolizes the difficulty of reforming anything about government publishing and distribution – so many seemingly minor things are written into statute that even minor reforms take Congressional action. On the other hand, it has been good insurance against the Federal Depository Library Program being wiped out entirely in favor of selling all government information.

Another reason that I just had to highlight this section is the fact that the government is empowered to sell blank forms makes it understandable that some agencies should have an Index of blank forms!

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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