law.usc-section

Fetch the authoritative current text of any United States Code section by title and section number — for example title 17, section 107 returns the fair-use statute. Returns the canonical citation, heading, hierarchy context (title/chapter), full statutory plain text, the Statutes-at-Large source credit, and a link to the official OLRC page; set includeNotes=true to also get editorial notes (amendment history, effective dates). Hyphenated and lettered sections like 1395w-4 or 78j work. Data from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel current ("prelim") edition, public domain — verify statutory citations against the authoritative source instead of relying on model memory. For federal regulations see /api/law/cfr-section; for case law see /api/law/case-verify.

Overview

The usc section API is a pay-per-call law endpoint built for AI agents and autonomous software. Fetch the authoritative current text of any United States Code section by title and section number — for example title 17, section 107 returns the fair-use statute.

There is no signup and no API key. An agent (or any HTTP client) hits the endpoint, receives an x402 "402 Payment Required" challenge, signs a sub-cent USDC payment on Base or Solana, and retries — the data comes back on the paid request. That makes it a drop-in usc section data source for an agent tool-use loop, an MCP host, or a backend that needs law data on demand without onboarding to yet another vendor portal.

Use cases

• Give an AI agent live usc section lookups as a tool, with no API key to provision or rotate — the agent pays per call from a wallet you fund.
• Enrich records in a data pipeline with law data, paying only for the calls you actually make instead of a monthly seat.
• Ground LLM answers in authoritative law data to cut hallucination, then optionally request a signed response for verifiability.
• Prototype against the live usc section API in minutes using the free trial call, then flip to per-call x402 payment for production with no code change.

Parameters

Code samples

# 1. Probe with no auth → 402 envelope with PaymentRequirements
curl -sS 'https://2s.io/api/law/usc-section?title=1&section=12345678&includeNotes=false'

# 2. Sign + retry with PAYMENT-SIGNATURE:
curl -sS 'https://2s.io/api/law/usc-section?title=1&section=12345678&includeNotes=false' \
  -H 'PAYMENT-SIGNATURE: <base64-json-payload>'

# Or use the canonical runner (handles probe → sign → retry):
#   EVM_PRIVATE_KEY=0x... node --env-file=.env.local \
#     --experimental-strip-types scripts/x402-pay.ts \
#     'https://2s.io/api/law/usc-section?title=1&section=12345678&includeNotes=false'

import { TwoS } from '@2sio/sdk'

const client = new TwoS({
  privateKey: process.env.EVM_PRIVATE_KEY as `0x${string}`,
})

const result = await client.law.uscSection({
  "title": 1,
  "section": "12345678",
  "includeNotes": false
})

console.log('endpoint:', result.endpoint)
console.log('cost:', result.costUsd, 'USDC')
console.log('tx:', result.settlement?.txHash)
console.log('data:', result.data)

import os
from twosio import TwoS

client = TwoS(private_key=os.environ["EVM_PRIVATE_KEY"])

result = client.law.usc_section(title=1, section="12345678", includeNotes=False)

print("endpoint:", result.endpoint)
print("cost:", result.cost_usd, "USDC")
print("tx:", (result.settlement or {}).get("tx_hash"))
print("data:", result.data)

// 1. Add @2sio/mcp to your MCP host config (Claude Desktop example below).
//    EVM_PRIVATE_KEY funds x402 payments per call.

// claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "2sio": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@2sio/mcp"],
      "env": { "EVM_PRIVATE_KEY": "0x..." }
    }
  }
}

// 2. Once the server is running, agents call this tool via standard MCP:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "law.usc-section",
    "arguments": {
      "title": 1,
      "section": "12345678",
      "includeNotes": false
    }
  }
}

Response

{
  "ok": true,
  "items": [
    {
      "citation": "example",
      "title": 1,
      "section": "example",
      "heading": "example",
      "context": "example",
      "text": "example",
      "sourceCredit": "example",
      "notes": "example",
      "truncated": false,
      "edition": "example",
      "url": "example"
    }
  ],
  "total": 1,
  "source": {
    "provider": "example",
    "url": "example",
    "license": "example"
  }
}

FAQ

Do I need an API key to use the usc section API?

No. law.usc-section is x402-native — there is no signup and no API key. Your client makes the call, receives a 402 with payment requirements, signs a USDC payment, and retries. Funds come from a wallet you control.

How much does the usc section API cost?

$0.0018 USDC per call, charged per request. There are no monthly fees, seats, or minimums — you pay only for the calls you make.

Can I try the usc section API for free first?

Yes. Add ?trial=1 (or the header X-2s-Trial: 1) to get a free real call per endpoint per hour, so you can verify the response shape before wiring payment.

Which networks and tokens are supported?

USDC on Base (via EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization) or Solana (SPL transfer), using the open x402 payment protocol.

How do I call law.usc-section from an AI agent or MCP host?

Use @2sio/sdk (TypeScript), 2sio (Python), or the @2sio/mcp server for any MCP host — each handles the probe → sign → retry loop for you. See the code samples on this page.

Discovery

• /api/directory — full catalog of every endpoint
• /openapi.json — OpenAPI 3.1 spec (per-op x-payment-info, x402Payment security)
• /.well-known/x402 — machine-readable service descriptor for x402-aware crawlers
• /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json — MCP SEP-1649 server card
• /llms.txt — plain-text manifest for LLM ingestion