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The entire US Code is now online in XML

uscodebeta.house.gov

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Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#21

Post by [deleted] »

tlrobinson wrote: post #8
pnathan wrote: post #6

I'm really tempted to collect the XML files and put them on github, with periodic checkpoints to update it with the latest. Watching the evolution of law over time is a fascinating thing and using SW engineering tools to help would be really fun.

I was under the impression law is essentially "append only". New laws override existing laws, but the text of the existing law never changes.

[deleted]

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#22

Post by eblume »

TsiCClawOfLight wrote: post #15
pnathan wrote: post #6

I'm really tempted to collect the XML files and put them on github, with periodic checkpoints to update it with the latest. Watching the evolution of law over time is a fascinating thing and using SW engineering tools to help would be really fun.

We actually have something similar in germany, called the "Bundesgit" ( https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze )

I'm not a native German speaker but that's a pretty clever pun, right?

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#23

Post by rlvesco7 »

generj wrote: post #3
calpaterson wrote: post #2

For those of us who don't know anything about it, what are the uses of machine readable law?

Just from a Natural Language perspective, this is amazing. By using the code as as a corpus, we can see how differently legal language differs from day-to-day parlance. Such an analysis might be fascinating, especially if we compare to word frequency in Google Ngram's historical index. I suspect legal language trails several decades behind modern lingo. Semi-intelligent queries can be executed, such that ignorance of…

There is a company that is doing something somewhat related and equally cool. They use NLP to identify who may have written particular portions of bills. http://www.legcyte.com/

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#24

Post by rayiner »

tlrobinson wrote: post #8
pnathan wrote: post #6

I'm really tempted to collect the XML files and put them on github, with periodic checkpoints to update it with the latest. Watching the evolution of law over time is a fascinating thing and using SW engineering tools to help would be really fun.

I was under the impression law is essentially "append only". New laws override existing laws, but the text of the existing law never changes.

Laws are essentially diffs against the US code. The diff (slip law) is canonical. They are continually compiled into the US code, which can involve deleting or changing text just like a diff, and periodically an edited, annotated code is published. After a certain amount of time, Congress enacts a portion of the published code, making it canonical and overriding any prior slip law.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code#Legal_status

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#26

Post by lmkg »

tlrobinson wrote: post #8
pnathan wrote: post #6

I'm really tempted to collect the XML files and put them on github, with periodic checkpoints to update it with the latest. Watching the evolution of law over time is a fascinating thing and using SW engineering tools to help would be really fun.

I was under the impression law is essentially "append only". New laws override existing laws, but the text of the existing law never changes.

The US Code is not the same as the laws of the US. It is a "current snapshot" of existing laws in force, and does not itself have legal weight unless explicitly granted by Congress.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#30

Post by sc68cal »

pnathan wrote: post #6

I'm really tempted to collect the XML files and put them on github, with periodic checkpoints to update it with the latest. Watching the evolution of law over time is a fascinating thing and using SW engineering tools to help would be really fun.

This is currently done via scraping:

https://github.com/divegeek/uscode

The diffs are huge.

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