Wonderlich on Legislative Collaboration and Version Control

John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation has an interesting new post entitled On Legislative Collaboration and Version Control, at the Sunlight Foundation Blog.

He writes:

Proponents of applying version control systems to law have a powerful vision: a bill or law, with its history laid bare and its sections precisely broken out, and real names attached prominently to each one. Why shouldn’t we able to have that? And since version control systems are helpful to the point of absolute necessity in any collaborative software effort, why wouldn’t Congress employ such an approach?

When people first happen upon this idea, their reaction tends to fall into two camps, which I’ll refer to as triumphalist and dismissive. [...]

The Sunlight Foundation‘s approach can probably be described as qualified triumphalism. [...]

Click here for recent developments concerning legislative version control, including the topic known as GitLaw.

Click here for a list of legislative crowdsourcing projects in the U.S., compiled by OpenCongress, that John cites in the post.

HT @EllnMllr

GitLaw in Germany: Deutsche Bundesgesetze- und verordnungen im Markdown auf GitHub = German Federal Laws and Regulations in Markdown on GitHub

German federal laws and regulations appear to have been marked up in Markdown format and placed on GitHub, at https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze#german-federal-laws-and-regulations.

According to the project’s ReadMe, “The source is the XML version of the laws from www.gesetze-im-internet.de “

Scrapers and other tools associated with this project appear to be on GitHub at https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze-tools.

The project seems consistent with the recent trend commonly called GitLaw.

For details on updates and other issues, please see the project’s ReadMe.

The names of the personnel on this project are unknown. The Twitter account associated with this project appears to be @bundesgit.

HT @newsycombinator and @sclopit.

Voelker on GitHub for Laws and Legal Documents

Abe Voelker of the Wisconsin Court System has posted GitLaw: GitHub for Laws and Legal Documents – a Tourniquet for American Liberty, at his blog.

In this post, Mr. Voelker advocates creating a version-control and version-tracking system for U.S. federal legislation using Git version tracking software.

Mr. Voelker also endorses the creation of “a new markup language for legal doc[ument]s that would work similar[ly] to Markdown.” As a possible model he cites Fountain, “a markup syntax for screenplays.” He rejects RDF and XML formats for legislation because they are “not very readable.”

Mr. Voelker observes that sharing a common legislative format at the local, state, national, and international levels would yield benefits.

Mr. Voelker argues that using a Git-based standard format for personal legal documents, such as wills and powers of attorney, would benefit consumers by improving security for those documents, and by allowing consumers to use standard forms and avoid hiring lawyers to advise on legal document preparation.

Mr. Voelker also speculates that use of Git-based legal document standards might help consumers feel more comfortable with the law, and might “inspir[e] a move to more plain English legal wording.”

Most of these issues appear to have been discussed recently, or are the subject of current projects and meetings, but none of that discussion or activity is cited or linked to in Mr. Voelker’s post. I’ve described those discussions and activities in this post.

In the comments to that post, please feel free to identify other relevant discussions, activities, or resources that I’ve overlooked.

HT @hackernewsbot.