LinkedLegislation Blog

As the Wiener scandal reminds us, Congress doesn't quite have the hang of this internet thing. So I take the liberty here to provide 5 suggestions of better things Congressmen could be doing with their access to the web and our tax dollars: DO DON'T 1. Write in Plain English... [Read More]

I've made some improvements to calaw.tabulaw.com, which has all of California's legal codes with internal links for easy navigation of the laws. It now also has a fast search engine, powered by Sphinx.Know anyone who works with California state law? Pass this on to them. Anyone in the legislature? They... [Read More]

I found more than a thousand errors in the course of parsing the online version of California's legal codes. At first, I thought there might be something wrong with my parsing algorithms -- I had, indeed, gone through a number of rounds of bug-fixing. These repeated sections were carried over... [Read More]

CA legislation transformed (w. new website--check it out!) If you want to skip the more technical post below altogether, just go to calaw.tabulaw.com. It has no styling or search function yet, but compare the navigational flow to California's official legislative site: https://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html

Starting with the unstructured data in California's legislation, it takes many steps to add structure to a single Section. Or rather, to add back in the metadata that the Section's original drafters intended, to help a reader understand and navigate the law. The next step is to apply the transformations... [Read More]