CanLII launches API

Colin Lachance of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) tells us that CanLII, which provides free access to Canadian law, has opened an application programming interface (API).

A description appears below.

Colin has a new post at Slaw.ca that provides context for the API launch: Unbundling legal information.

Description of CanLII API:

This document describes the specifications of the CanLII API. The API provides over a million court judgments, tens of thousands of statutes and regulations and covers all the major courts and legislatures, as well as over 150 specialized courts and tribunals.

How it works

Let’s dig into the more technical information:

- The technical guidelines provide details about encoding, formats, error management and content negotiation.
- The technical guideline will give you detailed information on how to develop your client and interact with the API.

Supported Resources:

Currently, the API supports following services:

Legislation browse: Regulations and statutes from all Canadian federal, provincial and territorial jurisdictions,
Case browse: Judgments from all courts and tribunals accessible on CanLII.

On top of the complete documentation, you can also access directly to the content of the API thanks to the I/O Docs module. [...]

For the API key and for other details, please see the description.

HT @sglassmeyer

Open States now covers 50 U.S. states, DC, and Puerto Rico

The Open States law-related data project now covers all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, according to a new post at Sunlight Foundation Blog.

Here is an updated description of Open States:

Open States is a collection of tools that make it possible for citizens to track what is happening in their state’s capitol by aggregating information from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Using the site is simple: enter a U.S. address or select a state to start to research bills, [track bills,] review voting records, contact elected officials and more. [...]

Open States data are available via API and via bulk download.

There is a python client for the API.

Legal informatics projects that use Open States data include David Moore‘s OpenGovernment.org and Waldo Jaquith‘s The State Decoded.

HT @openstates

Mill: Sunlight Foundation releases Congress API

Eric Mill of the Sunlight Foundation points us to Sunlight Congress API released yesterday.

Here is a description:

A live JSON API for the people and work of Congress, provided by the Sunlight Foundation.

Features

Lots of features and data for members of Congress:

• Look up legislators by location or by zip code.
• Official Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accounts.
• Committees and subcommittees in Congress, including memberships and rankings.

We also provide Congress’ daily work:

• All introduced bills in the House and Senate, and what occurs to them (updated daily).
• Full text search over bills, with powerful Lucene-based query syntax.
• Real time notice of votes, floor activity, and committee hearings, and when bills are scheduled for debate.

All data is served in JSON, and requires a Sunlight API key. An API key is free to register and has no usage limits.

We have an API mailing list, and can be found on Twitter at @sunlightlabs. Bugs and feature requests can be made on Github Issues. [...]

About the source of the bill data, Eric says:

it’s built on the github.com/unitedstates work that GovTrack and Sunlight and others created, which ultimately comes from THOMAS.

He adds:

there’s a mix of other (documented) official sources too. One of the API’s purposes is to connect and de-silo information.

For more details, please see the Sunlight Congress API site.

For more information on the github.com/unitedstates repository, which was co-developed by Eric, Dr. Joshua Tauberer of GovTrack, and Derek Willis of the New York Times, please see the post entitled New Congressional Data Available for Free Bulk Download: Bill Data 1973- , Members 1789-

HT @konklone

Congress.gov: New Official Source of U.S. Federal Legislative Information

The U.S. Congress has launched a new official legislative information system for the U.S. federal government: Congress.gov.

According to Alex Howard of O’Reilly:

[...] the new Congress.gov features responsive design, adapting to desktop, tablet or smartphone screens. It’s also search-centric, with Boolean search and, in an acknowledgement that most of its visitors show up looking for information, puts a search field front and center in the interface. The site includes member profiles for U.S. Senators and Representatives, with associated legislative work. In a nod to a mainstay of social media and media websites, the new Congress.gov also has a “most viewed bills” list that lets visitors see at a glance what laws or proposals are gathering interest online. (You can download a fact sheet on all the changes as a PDF).

Click here for Alex’s complete post about Congress.gov.

Daniel Schuman of the Sunlight Foundation observes that Congress.gov does not provide “for public comment on the design process [or] computer-friendly bulk access to the underlying data.”

Daniel, Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute, and others have recently written recommendations to Congress about providing public bulk access to congressional data.

Tom and his team have been consulting with the Library of Congress on their legislative metadata, and Congress.gov appears to reflect their work. Tom describes this new approach to legislative metadata approach in a series of posts here.

Kim Nayyer of the University of Victoria Law Library has also written about Congress.gov at Slaw.ca.

Nick Judd and Miranda Neubauer have written a post about Congress.gov at TechPresident: What Congress.gov Means for a Congressional API.