Source: http://www.harrysurden.com/wordpress/archives/414
Timestamp: 2018-11-15 16:29:22
Document Index: 664303976

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 1', 'art 1', '§\u202f101', '§\u202f101', 'art 2', 'art 1']

Structuring US Law: Part 1 – Harry Surden
Structuring US Law: Part 1
The U.S. Code – (the primary collection of Federal Statutory Law) – has become structured. It always had an implicit structure. However, since 2013 it has had an explicit, machine-readable structure.
US Code Explorer – Click to Open Explorer
<section number="101">
<sectionText>
</sectionText>
<section style="-uslm-lc:I80"
id="id223e3b13-a7cf-11e4-a0e4-817d0c170cd7"
identifier="/us/usc/t35/s101">
<num value="101">§ 101.</num>
<heading> Inventions patentable</heading></p>
<p style="font-size: 11pt;"><content>
<p style="-uslm-lc:I11" class="indent0">
<p style="font-size: 11pt;"></content>
Computer Friendly Law
This version of the law is much less human-friendly to read, but much more computer friendly to read. Computers excel when there are precise, unambiguous rules to follow.
The .xml version of the U.S. Code makes the structure and hierarchy of the law explicit in a way that a computer can be told read. For instance, rather than guessing about where the text of section 101 begins ands ends based upon bolding and spacing, we have been told explicitly thanks to the <section> tags. The text of Section 101 is everything between the labels
The US Government took the time to label the exact start and end of every single section, part, etc of every law in the U.S. Code.
This means that a computer no longer has to approximate based upon visual cues or spacing to determine the start or end of the section. The end result is that a computer can unambiguously and accurately extract the text of any section, subsection, chapter, etc in any US Title.
Extracting the Hierarchy
Additionally, the hierarchy of parts within each US Title has been made explicit. For instance, Title 35 in .xml looks something like this:
<title><num value="35">Title 35—</num>
<part> <num value="II">PART II—</num>
<chapter><num value="2">CHAPTER 2—</num>
<section><num value="101">§ 101.</num>
Including Part I inside the Title tags <title></title> indicates that Part II is below “Title” in the law hierarchy. Similarly, Chapter 2
has been explicitly been placed within Part 2’s opening and closing tags <part> </part>.
<part> <num value="II">PART II—</num>
This indicates that Part II is contained within Chapter 2, and so on. By explicitly placing one portion within the tags of the other portion, you are explicitly defining the hierarchy in a way that the computer can read.
The upshot is that computers can now precisely read or “parse” the structure (but not the meaning) of the U.S. code. Because of this, we can begin to create interesting visualizations and apps like the U.S. Code explorer that were not previously easy to in the era of “plain-text” law.
In a follow up post, I will explain more about parsing the U.S. Code in .xml and creating visualizations and apps based upon that
Posted in Computers, Law and Structure on April 9, 2015 by Harry Surden.
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