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Description
Presented by Ari Hershowitz, Director of Open Government, Xcential Corporation
"Many people talk of 'git for law'. It's neither as simple as coders imagine, nor as complex as lawyers would make it. A new rule in the U.S. House of Representatives (the 'Posey Rule'), requires redlined prints comparing documents before and after changes in Committee.
As a lawyer who codes, I work for the U.S. House of Representatives to build document comparison software that works for law, can track changes in law and ultimately will be able to show what the law was at any point in time."
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A
So
the
main
question
that
we're
trying
to
answer
is
what
was
the
law
a
year
ago?
What
was
the
law
five
years
ago,
or
even
what
is
the
law
today?
And
it
might
surprise
some
of
you
to
know
that
for
many
different
laws,
especially
laws
that
have
been
changed
recently,
there
is
no
current
official
version
of
the
law.
It's
pretty
surprising,
so
version
control
becomes
very
difficult
when
you
don't
even
have
a
version
when
we're
talking
about
changes
to
the
law.
There
are
many
different
kinds
of
changes
that
we
look
at.
A
A
To
give
you
a
sense
of
where
we
work,
we
started.
Accentual
technology
started
with
the
California
Legislature
and
we
built
the
system
that
California
now
uses
to
write
the
laws
and
to
update
and
amend
laws.
Our
largest
project
now
is
in
in
the
United
States
House
of
Representatives
and
we're
working
on.
What's
called
the
house
modernization
project
that
is
involved
in
many
different
aspects
of
the
workflow
in
the
House
of
Representatives
and
in
particular,
looking
at
how
we
can
bring
in
principles
from
version
control
into
the
legal
drafting
process.
A
We've
worked
in
a
number
of
other
places.
What
I'm
going
to
be
talking
about
today
primarily
focuses
on
how
federal
law
in
the
United
States
works,
but
it
works
in
a
similar
fashion,
in
lots
of
jurisdictions
from
your
local
city
council,
up
to
gnash
jurisdictions
through
the
European
Union
and
many
of
the
version,
control
processes
developed,
hundreds
or
even
a
thousand
of
years
ago,
with
amendments
are
still
in
play
today.
A
I
hope
your
first
answer
wasn't
just
use
get
because
there
are
a
lot
of
processes
which
I'll
talk
about
that
make
standard
version
control
for
computer
code,
not
really
applicable
for
legal
documents
in
2011
I
put
together
this
Venn
diagram
that
showed
the
people
who
are
lawyers
and
people
who
have
github
accounts
at
the
time.
The
intersection
could
arguably
been
just
me
since
then.
A
We'll
talk
about
some
of
the
reasons
you
can't
just
use
git.
The
first
reason
is
that
amendments
to
law,
so
changes
are
not
made
as
versions
generally
often.
What
you
get
is
a
sentence
and
a
that
says
something
like
the
federal
Power
Act
is
amended
by
striking
a
particular
subparagraph
and
inserting
the
following
text.
So
now
you
have
to
interpret
that
textual
language,
and
often
it
comes
with
verbs
like
strike,
insert
move
repeal
amend.
A
The
second
is
that
when
we're
talking
about
changes
to
law,
we
get
acts
not
repositories.
Every
time,
Congress
passes
a
new
law,
it's
an
act
and
it's
an
act
with
name
and
it
can
do
a
number
of
things,
including
changing
prior
acts.
So
this
is
if,
as
if
each
new
commits
that
you
have
changes
a
whole
bunch
of
repositories
in
a
whole
bunch
of
different
places
and
there's
no
limit
to
how
many
repositories
a
particular
commit,
you
know
a
particular
act.
A
Can
change
so
you've
gotta
track
all
of
the
changes
that
are
being
made
and
each
version
of
each
law
that
comes
across
through
the
centuries
and
thousands
of
acts
that
you're
working
with
and
the
the
last
problem
that
I'll
talk
about
is
the
standard.
Diff,
doesn't
work
and
just
to
get
a
sense
of.
Why
think
about
a
thousand-page
bill
where
you
move
a
section
from
the
top
of
the
bill
to
the
middle
of
the
bill?
And
then
you
change
a
few
words
when
you
do
a
standard.
A
If
you
won't
know
that
that's
the
same
section
right,
so
you
have
to
have
a
semantically
relevant
measure
of
what
a
matching
section
is
or
what
a
matching
provision
is.
When
you
move
stuff
around
and
change
it.
So
I'll
talk
quickly
about
some
of
our
solutions
and
then
sort
of
open
it
up
to
your
thoughts.
The
first
is
that
we're
working
with
machine
readable
amendments,
so
we
this
is
the
work
of
Salem
adder
hyeme
on
our
team.
A
He
studied
at
the
Technion
in
the
University
of
Pennsylvania,
he's
a
natural
language,
processing
expert
and
he's
taking
hundreds
of
thousands
of
amendatory
phrases
figuring
out.
The
grammar
of
those
and
the
semantics
of
of
those
phrases
and
putting
those
into
a
machine
readable
form
we're
calling
it
ample
an
amendment
processing
language,
and
so
we
translate
what
the
legislature
gives
us
into
something:
that's
more
machine
readable.
A
The
second
is
to
do
the
same
thing,
with
references
with
legal
citations,
turning
them
into
machine,
readable
code
to
say:
here's
the
address
in
the
law
that
we're
talking
about
right,
which
then
you
can
imagine,
gives
you
more
of
a
query
language.
If
this,
if
the
code,
if,
if
this
citation,
can
be
machine
processed,
then
we
can
go
into
the
database
and
say
we're
in
the
database
is
the
federal
Power
Act
and
more
particularly,
whereas
section
2000
or
203
all
right.
A
A
The
third
solution
is
to
create
a
legally
relevant
death.
Part
of
doing
that
is
to
understand
what
is
legally
relevant
to
a
legislature.
What
is
the
same
section?
Is
it
just
the
title
being
the
same?
Is
it
a
number
of
words
so
I
identifying
the
moved
portions
of
a
legislative
text
by
what's
relevant
to
the
graph
drafter
and
the
fourth
solution,
which
is
really
and
most
important?
A
Is
you
basically
building
a
community
of
people
who
not
only
understands
code
but
also
is
willing
to
delve
into
the
traditions
and
the
processes
of
of
legislators
right,
because
if
you
just
implement
the
most
effective,
efficient
technical
solution,
it
won't
work
it'll
be
rejected
by
the
people
who
you'd
like
to
use
it
right.
So
developing
civic
minded
developers
is
really
our
most
important
step.