LexiFina brings Git-style version control to the US Code
Git for US Legislation
LexiFina has built a Git-like system for the US Code that tracks every amendment, effective date, and textual change across nine titles. By replaying public laws between release points, it reproduced 361 of 365 changes exactly. The tool lets lawyers pick a date, see the law in force, and trace which Act wrote each phrase—addressing a key weakness in language models that misapply outdated statutes.
For a case filed in May 2022, the release point printed at the time gives the lower limit, and only a later Act changes the answer.
- kfogel
NYT, 2007:
"... Think of what version control software could mean for the Congress [...]. If bills were created under a system where strike-throughs and additions were carefully tracked, the public would know which legislator made which change to a proposed piece of legislation as it made its way through the Capitol.
At last, there would be transparency in the legislative process. Best-case scenario, it would shame legislators from inserting language against the public interest and only meant to reward political contributors; at worst, it would make such insertions public and allow the voters to punish the politicians who made them. ..."
(from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/business/media/23link.htm... )
- Ericson2314
The Hacker News Community (hah) needs to lobby hard to pass a law (what boostrapping!) to require the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Law_Revision_Cou... to maintain the repo as part of their duties, and do it retroactively for the entire history of the US Code.
It's a simple idea; it's cheap; there are no outstanding technical questions; it benefits almost everyone. Let's get this done.
- ekns
I'm doing this as open source for all amendment-driven law for the world.
Finnish/Estonian law basically solved now but US/UK are a lot more complex to do correctly for some reason.
Now major version coming within 1 month probably with many architectural changes. The thesis is that it's basically all doable as a compiler but there may be certain cases which are irreducibly ambiguous and need human/AI to adjudicate them. The rest must be deterministic.
- TomAbel
Reminds me of a similar project for french law
French bills evolution versioned in git and visualized
The Law Factory: french bills as git, opendata and dataviz
https://www.lafabriquedelaloi.fr/
"Law is Code" on The Law Factory: french bills as git, opendata and dataviz - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7817357 May 2014 (0 comments)
- pcblues
I hadn't thought of using git to track the changes in legislation. This is a cool idea.
In Australia, I spent a bit of time trying to work out how to find which politician voted for what (both at state and federal level), so that when elections come, you can single out the individuals who voted for what legislation. I think AI may make this easier, but the challenge is in not spamming the "free and open" access to the online record of our legislation.
So far, it's probably a one-person $50K per year job to do this task manually, and the language of the public legislation record didn't lend itself easily to determining the laws or rights that actually changed when bills were passed into legislation. They are explicitly stated, but hard to distill with regexes, filters or other analysis tools (e.g. "Who voted to stop electric scooters going over 25km/h?") If you try reading the legislation, you will know what I mean.
"A complete and open record of the proceedings of our parliament" still needs people spend a good chunk of time interpreting and summarising it (e.g. the media, commentators, etc) which means it's a time-consuming hobby or a paid gig.
- verytrivial
"TeraText for Legislation"[1] has done this, specifically point in time reconstruction per amendments, for a couple of decades.
It uses a very 90s set of technologies, esp. XML, and is the golden source for legislation is a number of places around the world.
It is/was a very consulant-driven product and tightly coupled to a "secret sauce" database backend that no one really wants to use, but still, kind of cool.
- demibabs
When I read AI-generated text, my eyes just start glazing over… it really is hard to read.
The idea is cool though.
- aizk
If you're like me and also eager for cool uses for git, I'll share a cool one I use -- try out git for your resume! Commits change as you progress in life, and make branches for individually tailored resumes.
Blew my mind when I realized I could do that.