Where can I find an authoritative, up-to-date database of presidential executive orders?

1. Why “authoritative” points to the Office of the Federal Register online

Executive Orders are official presidential documents that are sent to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for publication in the Federal Register, and FederalRegister.gov provides the text, searchable interface, and bulk downloads of Executive Orders since 1937—making it the primary, authoritative digital source researchers rely on for current and historical orders ^{[2] [1]}.

2. The White House: immediate releases but not the final legal archive

The White House presidential-actions pages publish new Executive Orders as the administration issues them and are the fastest public-facing announcements of presidential action, but the OFR/Government Publishing Office process is what gives documents priority processing and formal appearance in the Federal Register, so the White House site is useful for immediacy while FederalRegister.gov provides the official publication stream ^{[3] [1]}.

3. GovInfo and the Code of Federal Regulations: the legal codification trail

After publication in the Federal Register, Executive Orders are eventually codified or reflected in Title 3 of the Code of Federal Regulations when appropriate, and govinfo (the Government Publishing Office’s platform) mirrors Federal Register content and offers search tools and filters (president, publish date) that researchers can use to narrow results, making govinfo another official government endpoint for legal and archival retrieval ^{[5] [2]}.

4. National Archives and disposition tables: historical indexing and caveats

The National Archives maintains Executive Orders disposition tables and historical indices that compile signed presidential documents and the status of orders, but its public-facing disposition updates were discontinued for current administrations (the Archives directs users to FederalRegister.gov for orders after January 2017), so NARA remains essential for disposition history up to 2017 while deferring to OFR for new material ^{[6] [7]}.

5. Law libraries and specialist collections for deep or pre‑1937 research

For pre‑1937 or codified research, law library guides and curated collections—Library of Congress research guides, Georgetown and Cornell LibGuides, and the American Presidency Project—provide parallel catalogs, historical compilations and context (including issues like unnumbered orders and earlier numbering practices), but these are secondary aggregations that draw on the Federal Register, GPO, and archival collections rather than replacing the OFR’s authoritative live feed ^{[8] [9] [10] [11]}.

6. Practical recommendation: a workflow for authoritative, up‑to‑date retrieval

For real-time tracking use WhiteHouse.gov for immediate notice of signed orders and FederalRegister.gov for the official text, searchability, metadata and bulk downloads; use GovInfo/GPO to access the official government-published editions and the CFR Title 3 codification when needed, and consult NARA disposition tables and law‑library guides for historical disposition, indexing quirks and pre‑1937 materials ^{[3] [1] [5] [6] [8]}.

7. Limitations and caveats researchers should know

Researchers should note that not every presidential directive is titled an “Executive Order” (many actions are memoranda, notices, or determinations), numbering conventions changed over time and some early orders were not deposited consistently, so complete historical reconstructions may require cross-checking FederalRegister.gov, archival guides and curated academic projects rather than relying on a single summary list ^{[2] [12] [11]}.