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A law is printed inside containers. A section sits in a chapter, the chapter in a title, and some codes add subtitles, divisions, parts or articles between them. Each container has a number or letter, and most have a heading. This page says what every container is called in the API, which fields carry its name, and where a name is missing.

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What a container is

A container is any level of a code between the code itself and a section. The levels are the publisher’s own, so no two codes have the same ladder. Read two real sections to see it.
The same word means different things in different codes. In California a title sits below a division and a part. In the U.S. Code it sits at the top. In Texas a title sits below the code, and in New York there are no titles at all, only articles. So never assume a level exists, and never assume where it sits: read the response. kind is also the request filter that drills into the node, with the one spelling difference in the table: a subject group is subject_group on a section and subjectGroup in a request. Pass a node’s identifier back as the filter its kind names and you list what is inside it. Browse the statute hierarchy walks a whole title that way.

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Where the names are

Four places carry a container’s name, and they agree. Read it from a real response. This is Delaware, a state that divides a title into subtitles, articles and parts (served 2026-10-26):
Five things to read in it:
  • breadcrumb is in the publisher’s order, which is not always the order of the flat fields. Delaware’s breadcrumb runs title, subtitle, article, part. California’s runs code, division, part, title, chapter. Do not rebuild a path from the flat fields.
  • label is the level and its number (Article 2), and name is the heading (Sales). displayPath joins them as Article 2: Sales.
  • A container with no name prints only its label. In New Jersey the path reads NJ Code / Title 2C: THE NEW JERSEY CODE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE / Chapter 12 / Section 12-1, and the chapter’s breadcrumb entry carries no name key at all.
  • Names are printed the way the publisher prints them. Capitals, sentence case and abbreviations are the publisher’s own: a Delaware chapter is UNIFORM ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS ACT and a Delaware article is Sales. We never recase a name.
  • The code itself is a level. Texas has a code entry (Code pe, name Penal Code) at the top of its breadcrumb, because the Penal Code and the Water Code are separate codes inside one state. The code identifier (tx_pe) is the filter that lists inside it.
The same containers in the listing: GET /us/statutes/divisions?corpusType=STATE&state=de&code=de_6 has the node { "identifier": "2", "name": "Sales", "kind": "article", ... }. Adding &article=2 lists the parts inside it, among them { "identifier": "2", "name": "Form, Formation and Readjustment of Contract", "kind": "part", ... }.

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A null name

name is null on a listing node, and absent on a breadcrumb entry, when we serve no heading for that container. There are two reasons, and the response does not say which.
  • The publisher prints no heading. New Jersey prints a chapter as a number alone, and Maryland prints the article’s name and no title or subtitle heading. No name exists to serve, so null is the whole answer.
  • We have not read the heading yet. A name we cannot confirm from the publisher’s own pages is left empty, never guessed or title-cased from a neighbour. The table below lists, for each jurisdiction, every level that is not fully named.
Neither means the container is empty or missing: sectionCount and the sections inside it are unaffected. Do not read a null name as “no such level”. The level is real and has a number; only the heading is missing.

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Which jurisdictions name which levels

Measured 2026-10-27 across every state statute section. A container counts as named when any of its sections carries its heading in breadcrumb, or in chapterName or articleName. The second column lists the levels the jurisdiction records above its sections. The third lists each level that is not fully named, with how many of its containers carry a heading.

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Caveats by jurisdiction

  • Texas. Titles, subtitles and chapters carry the publisher’s capitalised headings. The code level is a citation label plus the code’s name (Code pe, Penal Code). The /divisions name of a code is its citation form (Tex. Penal Code), while the breadcrumb name of the same code is Penal Code.
  • California. The ladder is code, division, part, title, chapter, article, and any of them can be absent. titleNumber and titleName read the level called title (5, HIRING for Civil Code § 1950.5), not the code. Chapter numbers repeat inside one code: see Pooled numbers below.
  • New York. Laws are divided into articles, not chapters or titles, so there is no chapterName. titleName carries the law’s name (N.Y. General Business Law), and articleNumber/articleName carry the article (22-A).
  • New Jersey. Titles are named. Chapters print a number alone, so chapterName is null on every New Jersey section.
  • Maryland. The code is divided into articles, and a name is printed for the article only. titleName carries the article’s name (Md. Code, Commercial Law), and titles and subtitles are numbers alone.
  • Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee. These three codes are published by the state only through a commercial platform, under a licence that covers sourcing and not linking. We read their headings only from the pages that licence covers, never from another publisher, and sourceUrl is null for them. The platform’s own table of contents prints a name for every title and chapter, so every Arkansas title and chapter is named, every Georgia title and 898 of 899 chapters, and every Tennessee title and 1,228 of 1,234 chapters. The six Tennessee chapters are repealed and their heading is a bare [Repealed], and Georgia chapter 43-12A is printed twice with two different names (one per effective-date version), so those chapters have chapterName: null. A bracketed [Repealed] that follows a name is part of the heading and stays in the name.

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Pooled numbers

Some codes reuse a number at the same level in many places: California’s Civil Code has dozens of chapters numbered 2. A listing that is asked only for chapter=2 therefore cannot tell them apart. It answers kind: section nodes for every chapter that carries that number, flat, with a note saying so, and never merges them into one. Pass each ancestor the listing returned (code, division, part, title, chapter) to list one of them.

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Three more things you will meet

  • matchLevel on a citation answer. An exact match carries no matchLevel. When the citation named a container (10 CSR 40-6), several sections (§§ 1983-1985), a miscited code name, or a state register page, resolved is still true and matchLevel is container, multiple, repaired or register_reference, so you can tell the first section of a chapter from the section you cited. See Citation formats.
  • bodyUnavailable. A section the publisher prints as images (an appendix, a form, a map) has complete metadata and its place in the hierarchy, and no text. The body answers bodyUnavailable: true with bodyUnavailableReason: "image_only_source" and is not charged. See Response formats.
  • A name is not a number. chapter: "21" is the number, chapterName: "CIVIL RIGHTS" the heading. Pass numbers and identifiers to filters, never names.

Browse the statute hierarchy

List a code level by level with GET /us/statutes/divisions.

Response fields

Which fields each corpus carries, and which nulls to ignore.

Section identifiers

The actId, and the hierarchy fields on every section.

Corpus types

The corpora you can browse.
Last modified on October 29, 2026