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Comment by liscovich | Hacker News Reader

As the schema guide explains, in 1999 they picked XML based on the study from 1996:

"Following a 1999 feasibility study on XML/SGML, the Committee on House Administration adopted XML as a data standard for the exchange of legislative documents" http://uscodebeta.house.gov/download/resources/USLM-User-Gui...

It took the US Govt 17 years to release 200,000 pages of the US code in XML.

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I think the most time consuming part of the conversion is from text to digital. That's what took so long.

Interchanging formats should be relatively easy. Back in 1999, json wasn't even around.

IMO in today's API centric, and javascript ruled world. json would be a lot more useful.

Given that it can be mechanically converted to JSON, I have a hard time seeing how JSON would be a lot more useful. "Very slightly more convenient" seems like the most we could reasonably say.

I wonder why. The U.S. Code was in electronic format by the 1980's. The Air Force had FLITE, Justice had Juris, and then there's Lexis and Nexis.

I wonder if 17 years is fast for the government or slow.

Fast..... sadly

We might have to wait even longer for all the common law based on the court rulings to be published in the same format. Not to mention the "secret common law" based on the FISA court rulings.

Not sure what format the files are kept in, but it's been done. Several private companies have these behind a paywall:ThompsonWest and Lexis/Nexis are the most well known, but there are others. Don't forget the published caselaw of the fifty states as well as state legislation. The U.S. Code is far from the whole picture.

Sounds about right.

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