Section

A part separated from the rest, a division, a portion, as, specifically, a distinct part of a book or writing; the subdivision of a chapter; the division of a law or other writing, a paragraph, an article. State v. Babcock, 23 Neb. 128, 3G N. W. 348. The smallest numbered subdivision of a statute, code, text-book, etc., which contains a distinct subject. A paragraph ( q. v.); an article. Id.

See Lands, Public; Parcel, 2.

In American land law, one square mile, one thirty-sixth of a township.

1. The unit of measurement in the government surveys of the United States public lands. The general features of the system prescribed divide the public lands into townships six miles square; and each township into sections of six hundred and forty acres each. The sections are subdivided, for sale, into half-sections (three hundred and twenty acres) and quarter-sections (one hundred and sixty acres), and still further into what are called in the statutes half quarter-sections and quarter quarter-sections; but these last are, in practice, quite as often called eighties and forties, from the number of acres they respectively comprise; or are called fractions of a section. 2. In references to law-books, section is usually the smallest subdivision embracing a distinct subject; and separately paragraphed and numbered. Modern treatises, the codes, and the more extended and systematic statutes are very generally divided into books or parts; these into titles and chapters; and these last into sections, which is as far as any distinct subdivision usually runs.