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Today is the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution. In 1789, it was made available to the American people by the most modern technology of the day. We should do no less today, and provide the Constitution (along with commentary) in XML.To celebrate the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, the Sunlight Foundation is calling on the Government Printing Office to publish the legal treatise The Constitution Annotated online in XML format as it is updated. (The Constitution Annotated has been written by the Library of Congress for nearly 100 years, and contains analysis of nearly 8,000 U.S. Supreme Court cases.)
Over the decades, GPO has published print versions of this extraordinary resource every two years, with limited electronic versions available from 1992 edition onward. Although the Library of Congress has drafted the Constitution Annotated in XML for a number of years, that data is no longer present when it is published online by GPO. Releasing the treatise in XML would allow for the easy sharing of information between different kinds of computers, applications, and organizations, and provide a roadmap to the underlying data.
In addition to asking for The Constitution Annotated to be published online in XML, Sunlight is also asking that as the data is updated and made available to congressional staff, it also be made available to the general public. 220 Years Later, It's Time to Publish the Constitution Annotated Online in XML (Thanks, Gabriela!)
Ask the Government Printing Office to release the US Constitution in XML
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"Sunlight is also asking that as the data is updated and made available to congressional staff,"
Like they read anything, and what they can read, they blatantly disregard, for the most part. I keep hoping that with a constitutional scholar at the helm of the government this will change, but that has yet to be shown much in practice yet.
Oh for pity's sake... things are not somehow better when you wrap them in XML. Ask for them to be published "in any reasonable, readily parseable, unrestricted format".
Plain text, for example.
@asuffield,
"things are not somehow better when you wrap them in XML"
I am going to have to disagree with you there.
With the XML, I can present it to you, the end-user in any number of ways - including plain text.
Having the Constitution in XML is cute, having the Federal Register in XML/SGML would be actually useful.
Can't some individual just put the Constitution out in XML? Is there some reason folks need to get the government to do it for them?
Oops, ne'er mind. Didn't realize you were talking about a particular annotated version of the Constitution. My bad. Go, GPO!
Is there any reason why they wouldn't, aside from the time it would take to assemble it? (And I think it says it's already being written in XML.)
"any damn fool could produce a better data format than XML" –James Clark, a principal architect of XML
However his point was that XML wins not because it's good (it sucks), but it's what the majority adopted... so I guess that would be most democratic?
Too bad.
Interactive version:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/index.html
Nice historical sources:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Constitution.html
@gabrielm said:
"With the XML, I can present it to you, the end-user in any number of ways - including plain text."
With the plain text, I can present it to you, the end user, in any number of ways - including XML. :-)
XML is not magic. It's sometimes useful, yes, at least if you have obscure data fields which need to be understood by humans, or if you have syntax that you can validate with a schema, but I've seen it shoehorned into so many places where its use is wasteful and inappropriate that I sometimes wish the format had never been developed...
ahem, 1787.
Yes, 1787. I goofed in SL's blogpost. 9/17/1787 is adoption; 1789 is ratification. --DLS
Um, I'd rather it be released in ASCII.
Sept 17, 1787 - Finalized.
June 21, 1788 - 9th State Ratified (Req 9 States)
March 4, 1789 - Government started.
So technically the article is correct it is 220 years of the US using the constitution.
This is cute, but shit, nobody likes XML. :)
If you want the US Constitution marked up in some way, by all means, feel free.
Asking the government to do it is dumb. I don't mean that as a random insulting word. I mean it is unintelligent.
There is a website:
http://www.usconstitution.net/
That has text and pdf versions of it readily available.
> (along with commentary)
Whose commentary? From what political viewpoint?
Very bad idea.
It's an open document, what's stopping you?
Do you honestly want to leave the task of assigning tags up to the U.S. Government Documents office?
WTF?!
Do you think some G'ma/pa in the sunset years at their post (read: quiet gov't desk job, where nobody would come a'callin') has a clue about how to use XML to boost uptake/recog of the Constitution?
Would you really want to turn over this responsibility to committee? A committee of 45+ year-old Government Employees?
Take a look at some demographics data to see how bad this idea is..
- itomato
For an idea what they are referring to, look here for a link to the 2002 edition, with updates available with a little fishing on the website.
The issue isn't having access to the text of the actual constitution, it is the analysis and consideration of various court cases and how they relate to this founding document.
The XML thing seems a bit odd (to me), I think simple access to the text, either printed, ASCII, or PDF would be great, and be extremely useful...
"The XML thing seems a bit odd (to me), I think simple access to the text, either printed, ASCII, or PDF would be great, and be extremely useful..."
The document is prepared, as it stands now, through an interface that creates well-designed, structured XML. When GPO makes the document available to the public, it's in ASCII and PDF -- sans structured data. The structured data is unavailable to those who may want to republish, remix, or otherwise engage with the treatise.
This resource from Cornell, for example, is far more usable than the GPO version, and is created only through great manual labor.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/
This is sad, because the government has the structured data that makes this possible, but has thus far failed to release it.
As to this question:
"Do you think some G'ma/pa in the sunset years at their post (read: quiet gov't desk job, where nobody would come a'callin') has a clue about how to use XML to boost uptake/recog of the Constitution?"
The answer is yes. The Library of Congress employs some of the brightest minds in the country, who advise and research legislation for all of Congress. Many of them are grandparents. This document is currently prepared in robust XML, which would be obvious to the public if we had the same view of it as hill staffers do.
Reflexively dismissing government workers and grandparents is ridiculous; these are real people, with whose work one should acquaint oneself before such blanket criticism.
-John Wonderlich
Policy Director
The Sunlight Foundation
You can get the document on Footnote.com in JPEG and soon in PDF. They offer it in RSS so you can tag it as well. The main thing that's great is you can, register for free, and you can spotlight the document or actually create a personalized published page attaching it to it. That is all at no cost.
TheHistoryMan