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US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits

1198 points by styfle 7y ago

shanecoin 7y ago
The best part of this repository is that the authors and the commit dates reflect the true date of the event: James Ashley authored and JesseKPhillips committed on Dec 6, 1986 8th Congress authored and JesseKPhillips committed on Jun 15, 1980
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  Honestly it seems like one of the worst parts, that the dates are limited by UNIX timestamps and aren't flexible enough to store the dates from centuries ago.
  - the8472 7y ago
    they do when you use signed 64bit timestamps (or 128bit ones if you need the nanos)
    - kzrdude 7y ago
      Unfortunately git rejects dates before 1970, at least when I set them using GIT_AUTHOR_DATE
      - pault 7y ago
        This is especially troublesome when you need to cover up those 50 years of procrastination on a project.
        smitty1e 7y ago
        You say 'procrastination' I say 'The means IS the end, yo!'.
    - Mathnerd314 7y ago
      Apparently it's technically possible in Git as of a year or two ago, with some conversion bugs probably still lurking, but Github/Gitlab still don't support it. And the frontend tools like "git commit" don't support it. The project in this answer is using git hash-object to create the commit from raw bytes. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- he_the_great 7y ago
  No the dates are wrong, and the conversation used is stupid.
kej 7y ago
So much legislation consists of "add the following text to USC 1.23: 'blah blah blah'" that I'm surprised there isn't something like this for pending bills.
- badrequest 7y ago
  I had this realization like four years ago, and bought `gitvernment.org` precisely to do this...one day.
  - drharby 7y ago
    I should review my purchased domains too
  - clintonb 7y ago
    I also had a similar idea for a project that tracked changes so citizens could see exactly which representative changed a bill. The OpenGovFoundation built Madison[0] to enable the public to comment on bills, but that project has been shuttered. I still think there is some merit to the idea. The challenge, however, is to convince legislative bodies to use such a system. [0] https://mymadison.io https://mymadison.io
- matthewmcg 7y ago
  Agreed, though I think to sharpen the analogy, the United States Code (U.S.C.) would be the "code" in the repository and pending legislation would be pull requests.
- tpmoney 7y ago
  There is in a way. One of the selling points of LexisNexis’ law products are these sorts of “diff” views of the law
  - sjy 7y ago
    In my experience these services tend to have terrible UX, they’re not reliable or comprehensive, and they require human maintenance so there are usually huge subscription fees that scale with the number of statutes you have access to. Legislatures really should publish law in a machine readable format so that historical navigation and compilation can be fully automated including by members of the public. The human-readable statues can still be compiled artists; it’s a much easier and lower risk kind of modernisation than, say, converting paper forms into web apps.
cpeterso 7y ago
I love that the commits are attributed to the original authors: Amendment XXVII Author: James Madison Date: May 7 15:00:00 1999 -0400 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/3cdfe67a179375d54e33b76122a70532c7915d0c https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/3c... I wish the commits were dated with the changes' original dates. Perhaps they and GitHub's UI is just confused by pre-1970 epoch dates.
- sova 7y ago
  Literally Pre-history
- alexjm 7y ago
  It looks like this is a limitation because Git stores dates as seconds after the Unix epoch (1970-01-01). The underlying file format allows storing negative numbers, which would represent dates before the epoch, but most toolchains don't handle them correctly. Here's a pretty good summary: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-...
lez 7y ago
I really hope force push is disabled on the repo :)
- he_the_great 7y ago
  Nope, a rewrite branch is in the works (to many glaring issues to start with.)
ehayes 7y ago
> ...where does the government get the power to ban drugs. It likes to pretend that the interstate commerce clause gives them that power. _ie_ they're "regulating commerce" by waging the drug war.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  See Wickard v. Filburn, whereby the Supreme Court decided that growing crops entirely for your own consumption while staying within the border of one state is still 'interstate commerce'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
  - sova 7y ago
    Straddle two states with my farm ftw?
    - schoen 7y ago
      I think that will make your situation worse rather than better.
    - LocalH 7y ago
      That would technically put almost everything you do that doesn't stay on one side or other, under federal purview. Not recommended unless you're a masochist
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    This is a buddhistic "everything is connected" legal interpretation.
  - wahern 7y ago
    A better, more modern citation would be Gonzales v. Raich (2005), which upheld federal power to prohibit homegrown cannabis, even in a situation where it was stipulated (IIRC) that Raich's marijuana would never leave her house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich Notably, both Justice Kennedy and Justice Scalia voted in the majority. Chief Justice Rehnquist was as apoplectic about that vote as Kennedy and Scalia were when Chief Justice Roberts sided with the majority to uphold the Obamacare individual mandate. IMO, the liberal majority had the better argument on the individual mandate precisely because Scalia and Kennedy couldn't bring themselves to draw a line at homegrown cannabis. They were stuck relying on a ridiculous theory about affirmative obligations as they had already blew their chance at cabining the reach of interstate commerce, per se.
java-man 7y ago
Disclaimer: not supported within 100 miles of the U.S. border [0], [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  Did you file an issue?
  - bitwize 7y ago
    Like that would do any good. You have to have a friend high up in the U.S. government to escalate your case if you want things fixed.
  - java-man 7y ago
    against JesseKPhillips? Multiple issues have been filed (see references in [0] for example). [0] https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/06/the-border-search-muddle/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/06/the-border-search-muddl...
omarhaneef 7y ago
This is great. Is there a tool to do this? I mean, can I edit the times and the authors and create a history that I need with some software? Or did the author painstakingly go in and manually look up all the dates and make the commits? And then roll back for an error and just keep going? The issue is how would you change a single commit from 8 commits ago if there was an error there? And then how would you visualize the whole thing just to keep it straight in your head?
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  > The issue is how would you change a single commit from 8 commits ago if there was an error there? Rebase would be my first hunch. There's plenty of GUI based git editors, as long as it's all historically in order it's all fine and dandy.
  - dhritzkiv 7y ago
    Rebase and then force-push to reset the remote
- shakna 7y ago
  My approach would be to generate the git repo using a script of some kind. It wouldn't be particularly difficult, and then fixing a change is just a rebuild.
  - pintxo 7y ago
    Would that be a constituting script in this case?
- Buetol 7y ago
  > This is great. Is there a tool to do this? Here's a script doing the same thing but with another text [1]. In this case, we're storing each version as plain text files and then we make the git repo by compiling all of them. > And then how would you visualize the whole thing just to keep it straight in your head ? Like this for example [2]. [1]: https://github.com/regardscitoyens/historique_reglements_AN/blob/master/bin/make_git_repo https://github.com/regardscitoyens/historique_reglements_AN/... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160315050131/http://visualisiert.net/parteiengesetz/index.en.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160315050131/http://visualisie...
ElijahLynn 7y ago
Love this! And this is the future of legislation that we all need, all bills having detailed attribution to each word and line, linked back to lawmakers and lobbyists who created them!
m0sa 7y ago
I wish all legislation would be stored in modern version control.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Ajedi32 7y ago
Reminds me of this PR of the Declaration of Independence, with comments from the founding fathers: https://github.com/usgov/forget-the-king/pull/1 https://github.com/usgov/forget-the-king/pull/1
nebulous1 7y ago
This is probably common knowledge to Americans, but I noticed that the latest amendment on the commit log was written by James Madison. I was confused as to how that came about so recently and found on the wikipedia page: >It was submitted by the 1st Congress to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, along with eleven other proposed amendments. While ten of these twelve proposals were ratified in 1791 to become the Bill of Rights, what would become the Twenty-seventh Amendment and the proposed Congressional Apportionment Amendment did not get ratified by enough states for them to also come into force with the first ten amendments. > The proposed congressional pay amendment was largely forgotten until 1982, when Gregory Watson, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a paper for a government class in which he claimed that the amendment could still be ratified. A teaching assistant graded the paper a "C" and an appeal to the professor, Sharon Waite, failed, motivating Watson to launch a nationwide campaign to complete its ratification.[1] The amendment eventually became part of the United States Constitution, effective May 5, 1992,[2] completing a record-setting ratification period of 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days
- lisper 7y ago
  Not common knowledge at all. I learned about it back in the 1970s on a school field trip to Washington DC. I was looking at the original Bill of Rights in the National Archives and realized there were twelve amendments there rather than ten. I pointed this out to my teacher who told me to be quiet. (I think I was 10 years old at the time, so I complied.)
  - bskap 7y ago
    It's probably more commonly known among people who have taken government classes since 1992, since it's basically proof that government classes can have a real impact on public policy.
    - dolessdrugs 7y ago
      nope I took US history multiple times after that, still thought the bill of rights had 10 amendments
sova 7y ago
>Keep in mind this is not a formal platform to establish Constitutional changes.
- veddox 7y ago
  Yes, I loved that comment!
zgramana 7y ago
Love this! I just wish the Bill of Rights had been a pull request that was merged once the 11 ratifying states approved it.
crazygringo 7y ago
This is super cool. I wonder if it could be taken a step further? Because to me, the interesting parts are not the final versions, but would be in seeing the version history of the constituion as it was drafted and language was changed and rechanged, even with commit notes taken from records of the constitutional convention. For example, the currently topical impeachment language went through revisions on "be removable on impeachment and conviction of": [1] > "malpractice or neglect of duty." -- two North Carolina members > "treason, bribery, or corruption." -- five-member drafting committee > "treason, bribery, or maladministration." -- George Mason > "high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States." -- delegates > "high crimes and misdemeanors." -- final version It really would be fascinating to watch the constitution evolve in "real time" across all edits. I don't know if anyone's done something like that before. Obviously it would be a tremendous amount of scholarly work to put together. [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-19-mn-55593-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-19-mn-55593...
- mikeryan 7y ago
  You can see some draft versions here http://treasures.constitutioncenter.org/ http://treasures.constitutioncenter.org/
- purple_ducks 7y ago
  The commit messages would eventually all be WIP or somedoc_version_xx.
- ngomez 7y ago
  This is actually something I've played around with before. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the free time to finish the project. https://bitbucket.org/nsg-usa/constitution/commits/all https://bitbucket.org/nsg-usa/constitution/commits/all
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I think this should be reviewer comments on the pull request or issue that drove the change. It's not nicely representable in git, but it is on GitHub.
gumby 7y ago
Can I submit a pull request to get rid of the phony bits? Perhaps I'd better make that a series of pull requests.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  I'll bite...what are examples of phony bits?
  - gumby 7y ago
    This was a reference to news stories of the past few days characterizing parts of the constitution as "phony". The people who downvoted my comment were probably doing the right thing: I think the comment is funny and germane in the sense that git is a revision control system, but the comment can be inflammatory and really only marginally adds to the discussion. For the record I can't characterize any ratified part of the US constitution (even parts no longer applicable and/or deleted, such as the prohibition amendment #18) as "phony" (whether I think they are a good idea or not) as they are, by definition, authentic.
dodgez 7y ago
Can I fork it to make my own country?
- excalibur 7y ago
  There actually should be one of these already.
- he_the_great 7y ago
  I tried to make libre contribution, but I prefer the concept of granted power and that was not their direction. https://github.com/liberland/constitution https://github.com/liberland/constitution
francisofascii 7y ago
This is very cool. It would be nice to add commits for all the drafts of each amendment. For example, here are various drafts of the 2nd: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Earlier_proposals_and_drafts_of_the_Amendment https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United... It used to contain the phrase "but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person" but this phrase was dropped in the final version.
artur_makly 7y ago
What I find incredible is that the LEGAL industry has yet to adopt any 'git' style repo to manage all the multi-touch contract edits. My gut tells me the simple reason is because that would effectively make them lose most of their arcane billing hourly fees.
- gbear605 7y ago
  Many lawyers don’t work by the hour though, so what explains them?
  - leovander 7y ago
    They bill in 6 minute increments, right?
    - gbear605 7y ago
      I was referring rather to corporate lawyers who are paid salaries rather than hourly rates.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  Word documents have extensive markup and revision tracking features, and then they're passed around within emails that function similarly to commits. Git is only really useful when you're doing simultaneous changes to a large number of files.
  - gwright 7y ago
    In my experience Word's revision tracking is entirely inadequate to the task. I might take that back if everyone was editing a shared Word doc on Office365, but the typical scenario of emailing versions back and forth makes it very difficult to keep track of the current state of the document and ensure everyone is looking at the same thing. I don't think standard git with MS Word blobs would be better though. What I would like would be the conceptual structure of a git version history but with a commit viewer that could represent the commits in Word's revision control style as well as pull requests to track incremental agreements to change the document.
identity0 7y ago
JesseKPhillips was my favourite founding father. He was a genius for adding whitespace and readme.
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  > Add whitespace for better diffs For those confused.. There is a commit saying this
- tiglionabbit 7y ago
  I kinda wish they'd rebase the repository to put that stuff in so git blame would still give you the original authors.
anigbrowl 7y ago
As I've said before, the Constitution and our current legislative models were devised in a time of very slow travel and communications, when it made sense to hold periodic elections and have legislators travel to a central location for terms. There are no technical barriers to putting our entire legislative code online, dispensing with most legislative organs, and allowing people to edit it directly - a Wikiocracy, so to speak.
- hpoe 7y ago
  Although this sounds reasonable having everything published and voted on in real time turns out to just end back up with a representative democracy. This article explains some of the challenges with that idea much better than I can. https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597 https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-...
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    This isn't what I'm proposing at all. I do get his points, which are sincerely made, but I have also been thinking about this for decades and put in a lot of time in participation and advocacy at all levels of the political process. I'm proposing getting rid of legislatures and the whole legislative process and having the legal code publicly accessible for editing by the public. It would be on a blockchain (for verifiability purposes), and there would a derivative graph (for functional evaluation purposes - quite necessary because the whole meaning of a law could be changed by a relatively tiny textual edit like 'you must do X' -> 'you must not do X'). Up to now most network analysis of law has been applied to the legal infrastructure that grows around individual cases and treating legal code itself as axiomatic; consider, rather, analysis of the code's own network properties as tremulously explored in section VI herein: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1246&context=jbtl http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... The most immediate benefit of fully graphing the constitution/code/cases ecosystem would be the possibility of a serious pruning, to address the problem first pointed out in The Republic of a surfeit of laws that grows to such complexity that it crowds out confident understanding by the citizenry. We are quite a long way from replacing our existing legislative technology with a publically edited version, but the time to start exploring this is now, given the increasingly precarious state of our institutions and the widening asymmetry between our technological and legislative capacities. Put another way, we are innovating aster than our legal or political systems can keep up, and absent a consensus or voluntary dissensus on the social deployment of such innovation, it is more likely to be weaponized than any other outcome.
tom_mellior 7y ago
Are the amendments really meant to be inserted at unspecified points in the main text? I never thought of them like this, and it doesn't always work well here. Most glaringly, there is the part in https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/7f340829cfc2ea844de1adfa4d9618d2adb6f932 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/7f... in the article talking about the President's powers, saying "The President shall have Power to [...] He shall from time to time [...]" and the diff inserts "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." between these sentences. This doesn't work at all, not only because this amendment has nothing to do with the President's powers, but especially because the "He" starting the next sentence has nothing more to refer to. Of course this would be a lot more boring if the amendments were just tucked on at the end, but I'm afraid reality is just boring here.
- skissane 7y ago
  > Are the amendments really meant to be inserted at unspecified points in the main text? The US constitution is unusual in leaving the main text unchanged and appending amendments at the end. Most countries don't do that. For example, Australia's constitution [1] has been amended several times since it was first adopted in 1900. But, it is amended by changing the text of existing sections, inserting new sections or subsections (examples: section 105A, subsection 51(xxiiiA)), and deleting entire sections (example: section 127). [1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution.aspx https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practi...
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Most notably the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th, but both texts are still present in the amendments section of the US Constitution.
- he_the_great 7y ago
  The Bill of Rights is more additional than modification. The president is the commander an chief of the military, it seems reasonable he would not be allowed to quarter his troops in peoples homes. Take a look at this one https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/0cdbb927a04363d0bfd61bcfa35954e873f6dd91 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/0c...
s_dev 7y ago
Irish Constitution as a git repo with the commits as amendments. https://github.com/adrian/irish-constitution/commits/master https://github.com/adrian/irish-constitution/commits/master
- Buetol 7y ago
  Also french Constitution here: https://github.com/Assemblee-Citoyenne/constitution-francaise-4-octobre-1958 https://github.com/Assemblee-Citoyenne/constitution-francais...
mikorym 7y ago
This is pretty funny. I had something vaguely similar happen to me, although not nearly as major. In my matric year (grade 12) I took three first languages (although I already had two first languages by grade 10). The department of education did not like it, but I did it anyway, with some encouragement from my language teachers. Fast forward to the final exams, I did well enough to make the provincial top 40, but was excluded due to what I still think was a bug in their system. Funnily enough, I walked to the provincial minister for education (later the national Minister of Health) and told him what happened. For a short while I was a radio celebrity due to the minister personally telling people "Look, this white boy got a B in Sepedi so you guys really should stop complaining and do better." [1] The error was not corrected and I was actually at the ceremony by chance for having gotten best in English in the province. I also randomly got a call from some trust and got about $100 for my creative writing essay. In any case I guess the whole radio thing was more amusing to me and actually was a better prize in the end. [1] In South Africa, a B is 70%—79%; I had gotten 76%.
- za-correct 7y ago
  Edit: This is meant to be a comment on the latest commit—the 200 year old ammendment that got ratified in 1992, essentially due to a C being awarded for an essay about how the 200 year old ammendment could be ratified.
- mikorym 7y ago
  Note: this is now a duplicate, happy if mods remove this.
thrownaway954 7y ago
Man I wish ever bill and law was under version control so you could do a git blame
- baroffoos 7y ago
  There is rarely a single person behind changes though. You would have to show a list showing the person who proposed it, the people who requested changes to it and the people who voted for it.
  - eru 7y ago
    The actual writing of the words is usually outsourced. Quite a few people are involved in that. Clerks, lobbyists, lawyers, etc. Even the reading of the laws that lawmakers vote on is outsourced. (Ie lawmakers often don't read what they vote on.)
    - thrownaway954 7y ago
      dude... stop over thinking it.
    - he_the_great 7y ago
      That is why you have merge request approvers and the merger. The work can be authored by many because each makes small contributions. You can even have multiple protected branches where "policy makers" merge the work from their lawyer.
mxfh 7y ago
ccc Essen did a quite sophisticated project in 2013 regarding the German Grundgesetz (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5756354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5756354) https://github.com/c3e/DocPatch https://github.com/c3e/DocPatch docpatch genereates neat versioned markdown like this: https://github.com/c3e/grundgesetz https://github.com/c3e/grundgesetz now also here with the rest of german law text: https://github.com/bundestag/grundgesetz https://github.com/bundestag/grundgesetz
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 7y ago
As a staunch Constitutionalist, I love this.
all_blue_chucks 7y ago
Most of the constitution is missing here. To properly compile the constitution, the dependencies, such as supreme court rulings defining terms, must be included. I don't see those deps modeled in this repo.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Case law interpreting the Constitution is part of constitutional law, but is not part of the Constitution itself. You can thank the British for that.
  - lmkg 7y ago
    The Constitution uses a convention-over-configuration approach in almost all respects. Quite a lot of the actual effect are dependent on the build environment. Attempting to execute a source-identical Constitution outside of a Common Law context is not guaranteed to produce the same results, and is probably outright undefined behavior.
  - pnw_hazor 7y ago
    You should thank them everyday. Common law is the secret power of a good legal system (Speaking as an American lawyer, of course). In non-common law systems, extra-judicial experts (e.g., law professors) have too much weight in interpreting laws. If a legal hair is to be split, a common law court should do it. And, the court's holding should have precedence until a democratic legislature with jurisdiction over the issue says otherwise.
    - eru 7y ago
      In practice, Common Law jurisdictions and Civil Law Jurisdictions are not so different these days. (Democratic) legislation is an intruder to Common Law. And on the other hand, Civil Law systems give some at least informal weight to precedence. I don't quibble with your description of the idealized versions. See also http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo... for some alternative systems of law.
RocketSyntax 7y ago
I've got an issue with this one about muskets. https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/issues/5 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/issues/5
- bacondude3 7y ago
  Among other problems with the sentiment you expressed, it should be clear to anyone that the 2A has always been intended to cover far more than just muskets. At the time the 2nd Amendment was created, rifles were already in popular use and were vastly superior to muskets since they could be shot far more accurately and were able to be reloaded faster than muskets. Saying it only covers primitive rifles (compared to modern tech) would still be inaccurate, but slightly less so. Under a reasonable interpretation, whether one supports the 2nd Amendment or not, "Arms" covers (at least) anything an individual U.S. soldier might use in war; this includes full-auto weapons, suppressors, night-vision goggles, body armor, grenades.[1] [1]: If we were shipping items to a foreign country to help them in war, would a news editor be comfortable using the term "Arms" in the headline? If so, the 2A probably protects its ownership by American citizens.
  - mullen 7y ago
    Not even close. What we would call modern rifles were not invented until 1890's, with semi-auto and fully auto rifles not invented until about 1910 and not widely available until the 1930's. The minie ball was not invented until 1830's and did not see wide use until the American Civil war and after in the 1860's. The Founding Fathers were working with muskets and only muskets, they never imagined that the average person could own a AR15 (M4).
    - calibas 7y ago
      Wikipedia says rifles were used during the Revolutionary War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle#Historical_overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle#Historical_overview They were more accurate than muskets, but slower loading, so muskets were preferred.
    - 7y ago
secfirstmd 7y ago
I did something like this a few weeks ago when I put the Irish constitution on a public Google document and invited people to make suggestions and edits that may have to be made in the event of a reunification of Ireland situation. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJDjikCo4IHtEOcrEyNVIZeVcTr8oelYeZFWqNavdfA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJDjikCo4IHtEOcrEyNVIZeV...
durnygbur 7y ago
Why legal professionals are not using version control goddamit?! It's exactly the tool they need. Just recently worked with a lawyer who was negotiating settlement agreement on my behalf. The agreement in MS Word, edits highlighted with a color background, change requests in the body of the email - after 2-3 rounds of corrections reaching the other party nobody is able to keep a track of anything anymore. Seriously? Years of studies, prestigious profession, peoples' careers and lives at the stake, and this is how you work?!
- notelonmusk 7y ago
  cognitive load
  - durnygbur 7y ago
    They same applies to software professionals who just would like "to code". Yet, the leverage of distributed version control proves to be exponential in the end.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      It really doesn't. In software, you need to track versions because you keep everything in multiple files, and you're making changes to multiple files, and you can have regressions with each new version. In a negotiated legal document, you have just the one authoritative version: the offer you've sent to the other party (or the counter-offer they've sent back to you). For lawyers, this takes the form of edits to the document as highlighted by the Track Changes feature. (Prior versions are basically irrelevant except for historical interest.) And even then, the document going back and forth isn't even the executed (aka "production") document, it's just the development version. Once the document is executed, the development versions get deleted because the executed document is the only truth legally and so prior versions absolutely do not matter.
      - durnygbur 7y ago
        One can equally think of the entire code base as a single document, and of the release version as an executed document. In the long run the non-release repository states don't matter that much either, they're just helpful for anyone willing to gain an insight on why the things work the way they do.
gnrlbzik 7y ago
This is just awesome, i mean why not. Git -> history. This is great idea for other historical writings!
Buetol 7y ago
If you're curious of the origin of each word, a word-by-word "git blame", I just made a visualization of that [1]. For example, "We the people" comes from the draft by Morris. Also, somebody else did the work a few years ago [2], would be interesting to compare them. [1]: https://dam.io/word-blame-US-constitution/word-blame-by-commit.html https://dam.io/word-blame-US-constitution/word-blame-by-comm... [2]: https://github.com/anthonygarvan/theconstitution https://github.com/anthonygarvan/theconstitution
rcardo11 7y ago
I love HN
joshiefishbein 7y ago
This is precisely what Clay Shirky was talking about back in 2012 in his talk "How the Internet Will One Day Transform Government": https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_one_day_transform_government https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_... Now if we could only move our legislators' legislative processes into git...
- r00fus 7y ago
  First we have to remove tech troglodytes from government by voting for sane replacements. Only then can we discuss rational advances to tech in government. I see this as a distinct possibility if there is a wave election in 2020 with new voices who are open to actual non-lobbyist reform.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > First we have to remove tech troglodytes from government by voting for sane replacements. Only then can we discuss rational advances to tech in government. No, first “we” have to learn to talk about things that matter to most citizens, which tech in government, as such, is not. You need to talk to the things that can be delivered, tech is just a means to deliver them.
  - turk73 7y ago
    Yes! We must rip open the dark havens and sniff out the entrenched interests and shady operators. We need open government, not the back-room deals one we have now. Lobbying and the MIC have led us to ruin. I don't give peaceful outcomes much hope because Americans taken as a whole are far too ignorant and ill-informed. Reform will only come from the barrel of the gun and on the end of the rope as it always has. Or we will continue in chains as we do right now.
kethinov 7y ago
Someone submit a pull request to abolish the Senate, reform the House into a mixed-member proportional parliamentary system, mandate all state legislatures do the same, and replace the Electoral College with a ranked choice popular vote. One of the worst things about growing up in America is being inundated with propaganda about how we should revere the founding fathers only to grow up and realize that much-revered Constitution is riddled with bugs and badly needs refactoring to accord with modern best practices.
- simplecomplex 7y ago
  The Senate is more necessary than ever in this age of unconstitutional and almost unlimited exercise of federal power. The Senate ensures less populous states have an equal vote in our united (federated) states.
  - CameronNemo 7y ago
    The Senate ensures that representatives of as little as 7.42% of the US population can prevent a fascist president from being removed from office.
    - simplecomplex 7y ago
      The number of representatives apportioned for each state does not dictate how they vote on any particular issue. The Senate has existed long before our current president. The purpose of the Senate is to give all states equal suffrage in the legislature. Article 5 of the constitution states “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.“
    - sincerely 7y ago
      Literally every president since I was born has been fascist in some way or another. The senators aren't the problem here.
- RocketSyntax 7y ago
  Senate prevents true democracy aka mob rule.
geggam 7y ago
Always amazes me that so many people think the constitution grants people the rights. The constitution grants the govt rights. The people have all the rights not expressly forbidden by law. Law enforcement seriously lags in this as well
- diminoten 7y ago
  What really matters is what rights the people with the guns are willing to give you...
  - geggam 7y ago
    Which is the reason the 2nd amendment was written. The founders knew politics 101. Violence is required.
    - diminoten 7y ago
      Well, it was. Now, not so much.
      - whatthesmack 7y ago
        I assume you're responding to the GP's "Violence is required." Perhaps actual violence is not required now, but the threat of violence is still just as real and necessary.
        diminoten 7y ago
        Nope and nope. The threat of violence from the people is not real in the US any longer, nor is it necessary.
        geggam 7y ago
        Interesting, if you think this is true, speed 5mph over the limit and refuse to follow directions from the officer. eg dont pull over Let me know how the violence thing doesn't happen in a victimless crime.
tmsh 7y ago
What I like about this so far is you can see that organic moment when the phrase 'United States of America' is born.
zcopley 7y ago
Is there a Patriot Act PR?
- komali2 7y ago
  It was force pushed before code review.
nyxtom 7y ago
This needs to be done for congress and law in general. Merges done with presidential and congressional :shipit:
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jrobn 7y ago
—We The People [..] +The President [..] commit by _Trump_ November 2nd, 11:59pm 2020
jeffdavis 7y ago
It's unfortunate that the issues are being used to make non-serious amendment proposals.
- komali2 7y ago
  I think that's the best part
- he_the_great 7y ago
  It is fine, this isn't a legal platform, the issues are being labeled and later closed.
nyxtom 7y ago
Is there a way to automate this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1569/text/pl?overview=closed https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1569... ---------------------------- To amend title 28, United States Code, to add Flagstaff and Yuma to the list of locations in which court shall be held in the judicial district for the State of Arizona. <<NOTE: Aug. 9, 2019 - [H.R. 1569]>> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. DISTRICT COURTS IN THE JUDICIAL DISTRICT FOR THE STATE OF ARIZONA. Section 82 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking ``Globe, Phoenix, Prescott, and Tucson'' and inserting ``Flagstaff, Globe, Phoenix, Prescott, Tucson, and Yuma''. -------------------------- Note the use of "striking" and "inserting" which is basically a diff. The reference doc is here https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title28-section84&num=0&edition=prelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim... One possible low hanging fruit would be to automatically at least create diffs for these type of situations? Thoughts? Perhaps create a script just for this: https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B%22congress%22%3A%22116%22%2C%22source%22%3A%22legislation%22%2C%22search%22%3A%22amend%20united%20states%20code%22%7D&searchResultViewType=expanded https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B%22congress%22%3A%22116...
mizzao 7y ago
So are pull requests to this repo going to have to be implemented with rebases and force pushes?
- he_the_great 7y ago
  At this point yes. But that is for historical in accuracy, like the 12 amendment being added twice. Restructuring and formatting can come in as post edits. There is currently a rewrite in the works.
smitty1e 7y ago
Now do all pending legislation in a publicly visible, anonymous, read-only repo. Branches and commits are done under accounts tied to elected officials (though clearly their staffs mash the keys). We could have AI doing actual work of monitoring WHAT THE WHAT is going on. Hence the unlikelihood of this ever happening. Plus the reality that legislation is mostly a requirements document anymore, with the real work occurring in the Executive in the form of regulation concocted by unelected bureaucrats.
jxramos 7y ago
I would love love love to see this effort individually applied to the French and EU constitutions. I've heard the EU constitution is very bloated and gets into all sorts of minutiae. I've heard the French constitution has undergone a great deal of modifications across a span of many republics. These two examples I've heard about in the context of being ridiculed in some comedic comments by some pundits and I always wanted to substantiate whether the substance of those jests was fair and accurate or exaggerated. Converting these two constitutional histories to Git would be incredibility insightful, probably even worthy of crowd funding.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  The current French constitution was written entirely from scratch in 1958. Saying it’s been modified a lot is a bit muddled. What actually happened is that the old constitutions are no longer in force and entirely new ones came into effect. The 1958 constitution is France’s fifth (not counting constitutional monarchies), which is why the current French regime is called the “fifth Republic”.
etxm 7y ago
Wait a second. Are you telling me these motherfuckers haven’t made a commit in three years? How do they still have a fucking job.
socrates1024 7y ago
pretty much what we use at zcash foundation https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/about https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/about
thanatos_dem 7y ago
The git metadata should be updated with the approximate time stamps of when the changes were made. I’ve long wanted to try to do this type of thing with the US code of law. Beyond just being cool to look through, I think it’d make a lot of accountability of lawmakers more clear, since tooling to parse and gain insights from git repos are plentiful.
starpilot 7y ago
The Constitution is just a piece of paper.
dheera 7y ago
Too bad the "amendments" to the constitution are all really just "appendments" tacked on to the end rather than actual amends to the main body of the text, which would make the Git repo more interesting.
- he_the_great 7y ago
  The repo does edit the original document. The original amendment text is included in a separate file, but is not the purpose of the commit.
ComodoHacker 7y ago
Nitpick. On a local Git they could've reproduced it with actual dates and names.
shpx 7y ago
The fact that GitHub marks the initial commits as 2016, and says 48 years ago when you click on one, even though it clearly says 1787 in the commit message makes me sad. All these 6 figure salaries and we still can't write code that handles dates. How does someone look at a date and think it should only have two digits? How's it possible that someone could look at a system that only stores enough time for 68 years in future and think that's fine? Why is so much code written with the assumption that a year is a four digit number? The passage of time is guaranteed and yet programmers are somehow constantly surprised that it happens. The world is 14 billion years old and will exist for much much longer. Someone might need to write code dealing with any of those time periods, why do we make them expend mental effort on (what should be) such a reasonable, trivial task? We have the bits to spare. It's a strange form of collective procrastination.
- zifnab06 7y ago
  Github is primarily Rails/MySQL (or was last time I paid attention to any of their blogs), I'm guessing they're storing dates as a TIMESTAMP and not a DATETIME (4 bytes vs 8 bytes). GitHub's BigQuery public data set has 234,759,841 unique commits, and it appears there's 2 dates per commit (author and committer dates). So an extra ~1.8GB per master/shard group. Entirely doable but I have no idea what their scale actually is or how that translates to network throughput or anything else really.
- jeromebaek 7y ago
  Something about your comment rubs me the wrong way, and I think it’s a kind of toxic idealism that doesn’t acknowledge how software isn’t a mathematical object but situated in the real world. You realize 48 years ago is the Unix epoch? Circumventing this problem to admit commits that were made before 1970, which clearly has no real world use case, is over engineering at its worst. Similarly, with designing a system to last longer than 68 years. The number of tech companies that have lasted more than 68 years can be counted on one hand.
  - eru 7y ago
    It would be overkill to move from 32 bits of Unix timestamps to 64 bit signed ints just for this application. But it might be a good idea in general, and then it would solve this issue as a side effect.
Subirmadhu1 7y ago
Good
rathinmadhu 7y ago
Thanks you
ptah 7y ago
arguably this would be even more useful for the patchwork of laws and conventions that make up the british constitution
varshithr 7y ago
For a constitution, it's pretty readable.
wheybags 7y ago
> With the exception of the commits made in 1971, the year was actually 1791, I follow the simple path of ignoring the least significant digit. So 1996 means 196?as I chop off the 19, the year 1000 is implied and then tack on the next two significant digits of the year which is 96 and leaves off the specific year. What? I have no idea what you mean by this.
- cormorant 7y ago
  It means: fakeyear = Math.floor((realyear - 1000) / 10) + 1900 or equivalently approxrealyear = (fakeyear - 1900) * 10 + 1000 except that 1791 is represented as 1971 as a special case because it's a nice anagram (it should have been 1979).
airnomad 7y ago
I was kinda surprised to see only one pull request
known 7y ago
Time to amend it to counter Globalization
anilakar 7y ago
George says that every American should have a vacuum cleaner in their basement!
romacamehrniazi 7y ago
H
foobar_ 7y ago
Revolution == Rewrite. Ammendment == Patch. New Gov == Refactor. This kinda makes it easy to see how a simple system turns to shit over the long run.
nestorD 7y ago
Seem like a perfect use case for Git History : https://github.githistory.xyz/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/blob/master/Constitution.md https://github.githistory.xyz/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitutio...
werber 7y ago
Legit obsessed with idea, merge This into master please
turk73 7y ago
I think government literacy is very important and is lacking badly in the US. Our education system is a joke and history is at the forefront of the joke. I know this first hand because I am having to back-fill and bolster all the lessons for my children because the schools have watered down the curricula to an alarming degree. History and handwriting seem to have suffered the most. Our big problem is that we have too many laws and they are far too difficult for regular people to understand. On top of that, there exists an administrative state that has regulatory authority and can re-interpret laws to suit their whims. Laws are politicized, government institutions are weaponized for political purposes. Essentially, we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic at all because it has been purposefully eroded and undermined and done over such a long period of time (in lockstep with the near total devaluation of our currency) that few have taken note of the ominous situation we find ourselves in today. We are primed for revolution and it will only take the disruption of just-in-time food deliveries for a short time to foment total chaos. Although to be honest, maybe the food disruption would be plenty regardless of our tentative legal situation.
aristophenes 7y ago
This is cool, but I was a little disappointed to see the amendments as just commits. Should have been pull requests, with all the proposed amendments in there, with arguments about them, most of the PRs closed, only a few getting merged :)
Balgair 7y ago
How do The Federalist Papers fit into it? [0] Given that most states and the US Federal system use the Common Law method of judicial determination, The Federalist Papers act as an important method of interpretation of the intent of the original lawmakers. Are they 'comments' on the law then? What about the The Anti-Federalist Papers? [1] Though less well known, they are still very important to determination of the Constitution in our current government. Also, pull requests? Though not every tiny little court case and high school essay that relies on the 1st Amendment needs to be recorded, it would be great to see what the various supreme court justices have pulled and when. To be clear: I love this project and this idea! Super great job to the creators! You all rock! [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers
dmix 7y ago
An interesting backstory on the 27th: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_Grab_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_Grab_Act Politicians never change! They've gotten better at this trick by making the bills 1000 pages long, while adding last minute changes.
Apocryphon 7y ago
Diff with its most notorious fork, the constitution of the Confederacy: https://jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm https://jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm
MithrilTuxedo 7y ago
I'd love to see this with US Code. Imagine getting to see a change made by a member of Congress, then a pull request to a committee branch, then a pull request to one branch of Congress, then a pull request to the other branch, and then a pull request to the US Code.
WCityMike 7y ago
This may be of interest. It was formerly only available to Senators and their staff as a 3000-page hardcover. https://constitution.congress.gov/ https://constitution.congress.gov/

1198 points by styfle 7y ago

The best part of this repository is that the authors and the commit dates reflect the true date of the event: James Ashley authored and JesseKPhillips committed on Dec 6, 1986 8th Congress authored and JesseKPhillips committed on Jun 15, 1980

Mathnerd314 7y ago
Honestly it seems like one of the worst parts, that the dates are limited by UNIX timestamps and aren't flexible enough to store the dates from centuries ago.
- the8472 7y ago
  they do when you use signed 64bit timestamps (or 128bit ones if you need the nanos)
  - kzrdude 7y ago
    Unfortunately git rejects dates before 1970, at least when I set them using GIT_AUTHOR_DATE
    - pault 7y ago
      This is especially troublesome when you need to cover up those 50 years of procrastination on a project.
      - smitty1e 7y ago
        You say 'procrastination' I say 'The means IS the end, yo!'.
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    Apparently it's technically possible in Git as of a year or two ago, with some conversion bugs probably still lurking, but Github/Gitlab still don't support it. And the frontend tools like "git commit" don't support it. The project in this answer is using git hash-object to create the commit from raw bytes. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
he_the_great 7y ago
No the dates are wrong, and the conversation used is stupid.

kej 7y ago

So much legislation consists of "add the following text to USC 1.23: 'blah blah blah'" that I'm surprised there isn't something like this for pending bills.

badrequest 7y ago
I had this realization like four years ago, and bought `gitvernment.org` precisely to do this...one day.
- drharby 7y ago
  I should review my purchased domains too
- clintonb 7y ago
  I also had a similar idea for a project that tracked changes so citizens could see exactly which representative changed a bill. The OpenGovFoundation built Madison[0] to enable the public to comment on bills, but that project has been shuttered. I still think there is some merit to the idea. The challenge, however, is to convince legislative bodies to use such a system. [0] https://mymadison.io https://mymadison.io
matthewmcg 7y ago
Agreed, though I think to sharpen the analogy, the United States Code (U.S.C.) would be the "code" in the repository and pending legislation would be pull requests.
tpmoney 7y ago
There is in a way. One of the selling points of LexisNexis’ law products are these sorts of “diff” views of the law
- sjy 7y ago
  In my experience these services tend to have terrible UX, they’re not reliable or comprehensive, and they require human maintenance so there are usually huge subscription fees that scale with the number of statutes you have access to. Legislatures really should publish law in a machine readable format so that historical navigation and compilation can be fully automated including by members of the public. The human-readable statues can still be compiled artists; it’s a much easier and lower risk kind of modernisation than, say, converting paper forms into web apps.

cpeterso 7y ago

I love that the commits are attributed to the original authors: Amendment XXVII Author: James Madison Date: May 7 15:00:00 1999 -0400 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/3cdfe67a179375d54e33b76122a70532c7915d0c https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/3c... I wish the commits were dated with the changes' original dates. Perhaps they and GitHub's UI is just confused by pre-1970 epoch dates.

sova 7y ago
Literally Pre-history
alexjm 7y ago
It looks like this is a limitation because Git stores dates as seconds after the Unix epoch (1970-01-01). The underlying file format allows storing negative numbers, which would represent dates before the epoch, but most toolchains don't handle them correctly. Here's a pretty good summary: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-...

lez 7y ago

I really hope force push is disabled on the repo :)

he_the_great 7y ago
Nope, a rewrite branch is in the works (to many glaring issues to start with.)

ehayes 7y ago

> ...where does the government get the power to ban drugs. It likes to pretend that the interstate commerce clause gives them that power. _ie_ they're "regulating commerce" by waging the drug war.

crooked-v 7y ago
See Wickard v. Filburn, whereby the Supreme Court decided that growing crops entirely for your own consumption while staying within the border of one state is still 'interstate commerce'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
- sova 7y ago
  Straddle two states with my farm ftw?
  - schoen 7y ago
    I think that will make your situation worse rather than better.
  - LocalH 7y ago
    That would technically put almost everything you do that doesn't stay on one side or other, under federal purview. Not recommended unless you're a masochist
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  This is a buddhistic "everything is connected" legal interpretation.
- wahern 7y ago
  A better, more modern citation would be Gonzales v. Raich (2005), which upheld federal power to prohibit homegrown cannabis, even in a situation where it was stipulated (IIRC) that Raich's marijuana would never leave her house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich Notably, both Justice Kennedy and Justice Scalia voted in the majority. Chief Justice Rehnquist was as apoplectic about that vote as Kennedy and Scalia were when Chief Justice Roberts sided with the majority to uphold the Obamacare individual mandate. IMO, the liberal majority had the better argument on the individual mandate precisely because Scalia and Kennedy couldn't bring themselves to draw a line at homegrown cannabis. They were stuck relying on a ridiculous theory about affirmative obligations as they had already blew their chance at cabining the reach of interstate commerce, per se.

java-man 7y ago

Disclaimer: not supported within 100 miles of the U.S. border [0], [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
Did you file an issue?
- bitwize 7y ago
  Like that would do any good. You have to have a friend high up in the U.S. government to escalate your case if you want things fixed.
- java-man 7y ago
  against JesseKPhillips? Multiple issues have been filed (see references in [0] for example). [0] https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/06/the-border-search-muddle/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/06/the-border-search-muddl...

omarhaneef 7y ago

This is great. Is there a tool to do this? I mean, can I edit the times and the authors and create a history that I need with some software? Or did the author painstakingly go in and manually look up all the dates and make the commits? And then roll back for an error and just keep going? The issue is how would you change a single commit from 8 commits ago if there was an error there? And then how would you visualize the whole thing just to keep it straight in your head?

giancarlostoro 7y ago
> The issue is how would you change a single commit from 8 commits ago if there was an error there? Rebase would be my first hunch. There's plenty of GUI based git editors, as long as it's all historically in order it's all fine and dandy.
- dhritzkiv 7y ago
  Rebase and then force-push to reset the remote
shakna 7y ago
My approach would be to generate the git repo using a script of some kind. It wouldn't be particularly difficult, and then fixing a change is just a rebuild.
- pintxo 7y ago
  Would that be a constituting script in this case?
Buetol 7y ago
> This is great. Is there a tool to do this? Here's a script doing the same thing but with another text [1]. In this case, we're storing each version as plain text files and then we make the git repo by compiling all of them. > And then how would you visualize the whole thing just to keep it straight in your head ? Like this for example [2]. [1]: https://github.com/regardscitoyens/historique_reglements_AN/blob/master/bin/make_git_repo https://github.com/regardscitoyens/historique_reglements_AN/... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160315050131/http://visualisiert.net/parteiengesetz/index.en.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160315050131/http://visualisie...

ElijahLynn 7y ago

Love this! And this is the future of legislation that we all need, all bills having detailed attribution to each word and line, linked back to lawmakers and lobbyists who created them!

m0sa 7y ago

I wish all legislation would be stored in modern version control.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Ajedi32 7y ago

Reminds me of this PR of the Declaration of Independence, with comments from the founding fathers: https://github.com/usgov/forget-the-king/pull/1 https://github.com/usgov/forget-the-king/pull/1

nebulous1 7y ago

This is probably common knowledge to Americans, but I noticed that the latest amendment on the commit log was written by James Madison. I was confused as to how that came about so recently and found on the wikipedia page: >It was submitted by the 1st Congress to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, along with eleven other proposed amendments. While ten of these twelve proposals were ratified in 1791 to become the Bill of Rights, what would become the Twenty-seventh Amendment and the proposed Congressional Apportionment Amendment did not get ratified by enough states for them to also come into force with the first ten amendments. > The proposed congressional pay amendment was largely forgotten until 1982, when Gregory Watson, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a paper for a government class in which he claimed that the amendment could still be ratified. A teaching assistant graded the paper a "C" and an appeal to the professor, Sharon Waite, failed, motivating Watson to launch a nationwide campaign to complete its ratification.[1] The amendment eventually became part of the United States Constitution, effective May 5, 1992,[2] completing a record-setting ratification period of 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days

lisper 7y ago
Not common knowledge at all. I learned about it back in the 1970s on a school field trip to Washington DC. I was looking at the original Bill of Rights in the National Archives and realized there were twelve amendments there rather than ten. I pointed this out to my teacher who told me to be quiet. (I think I was 10 years old at the time, so I complied.)
- bskap 7y ago
  It's probably more commonly known among people who have taken government classes since 1992, since it's basically proof that government classes can have a real impact on public policy.
  - dolessdrugs 7y ago
    nope I took US history multiple times after that, still thought the bill of rights had 10 amendments

sova 7y ago

>Keep in mind this is not a formal platform to establish Constitutional changes.

veddox 7y ago
Yes, I loved that comment!

zgramana 7y ago

Love this! I just wish the Bill of Rights had been a pull request that was merged once the 11 ratifying states approved it.

crazygringo 7y ago

This is super cool. I wonder if it could be taken a step further? Because to me, the interesting parts are not the final versions, but would be in seeing the version history of the constituion as it was drafted and language was changed and rechanged, even with commit notes taken from records of the constitutional convention. For example, the currently topical impeachment language went through revisions on "be removable on impeachment and conviction of": [1] > "malpractice or neglect of duty." -- two North Carolina members > "treason, bribery, or corruption." -- five-member drafting committee > "treason, bribery, or maladministration." -- George Mason > "high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States." -- delegates > "high crimes and misdemeanors." -- final version It really would be fascinating to watch the constitution evolve in "real time" across all edits. I don't know if anyone's done something like that before. Obviously it would be a tremendous amount of scholarly work to put together. [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-19-mn-55593-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-19-mn-55593...

mikeryan 7y ago
You can see some draft versions here http://treasures.constitutioncenter.org/ http://treasures.constitutioncenter.org/
purple_ducks 7y ago
The commit messages would eventually all be WIP or somedoc_version_xx.
ngomez 7y ago
This is actually something I've played around with before. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the free time to finish the project. https://bitbucket.org/nsg-usa/constitution/commits/all https://bitbucket.org/nsg-usa/constitution/commits/all
alkonaut 7y ago
I think this should be reviewer comments on the pull request or issue that drove the change. It's not nicely representable in git, but it is on GitHub.

gumby 7y ago

Can I submit a pull request to get rid of the phony bits? Perhaps I'd better make that a series of pull requests.

hanniabu 7y ago
I'll bite...what are examples of phony bits?
- gumby 7y ago
  This was a reference to news stories of the past few days characterizing parts of the constitution as "phony". The people who downvoted my comment were probably doing the right thing: I think the comment is funny and germane in the sense that git is a revision control system, but the comment can be inflammatory and really only marginally adds to the discussion. For the record I can't characterize any ratified part of the US constitution (even parts no longer applicable and/or deleted, such as the prohibition amendment #18) as "phony" (whether I think they are a good idea or not) as they are, by definition, authentic.

dodgez 7y ago

Can I fork it to make my own country?

excalibur 7y ago
There actually should be one of these already.
he_the_great 7y ago
I tried to make libre contribution, but I prefer the concept of granted power and that was not their direction. https://github.com/liberland/constitution https://github.com/liberland/constitution

francisofascii 7y ago

This is very cool. It would be nice to add commits for all the drafts of each amendment. For example, here are various drafts of the 2nd: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Earlier_proposals_and_drafts_of_the_Amendment https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United... It used to contain the phrase "but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person" but this phrase was dropped in the final version.

artur_makly 7y ago

What I find incredible is that the LEGAL industry has yet to adopt any 'git' style repo to manage all the multi-touch contract edits. My gut tells me the simple reason is because that would effectively make them lose most of their arcane billing hourly fees.

gbear605 7y ago
Many lawyers don’t work by the hour though, so what explains them?
- leovander 7y ago
  They bill in 6 minute increments, right?
  - gbear605 7y ago
    I was referring rather to corporate lawyers who are paid salaries rather than hourly rates.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
Word documents have extensive markup and revision tracking features, and then they're passed around within emails that function similarly to commits. Git is only really useful when you're doing simultaneous changes to a large number of files.
- gwright 7y ago
  In my experience Word's revision tracking is entirely inadequate to the task. I might take that back if everyone was editing a shared Word doc on Office365, but the typical scenario of emailing versions back and forth makes it very difficult to keep track of the current state of the document and ensure everyone is looking at the same thing. I don't think standard git with MS Word blobs would be better though. What I would like would be the conceptual structure of a git version history but with a commit viewer that could represent the commits in Word's revision control style as well as pull requests to track incremental agreements to change the document.

identity0 7y ago

JesseKPhillips was my favourite founding father. He was a genius for adding whitespace and readme.

maerF0x0 7y ago
> Add whitespace for better diffs For those confused.. There is a commit saying this
tiglionabbit 7y ago
I kinda wish they'd rebase the repository to put that stuff in so git blame would still give you the original authors.

anigbrowl 7y ago

As I've said before, the Constitution and our current legislative models were devised in a time of very slow travel and communications, when it made sense to hold periodic elections and have legislators travel to a central location for terms. There are no technical barriers to putting our entire legislative code online, dispensing with most legislative organs, and allowing people to edit it directly - a Wikiocracy, so to speak.

hpoe 7y ago
Although this sounds reasonable having everything published and voted on in real time turns out to just end back up with a representative democracy. This article explains some of the challenges with that idea much better than I can. https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597 https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-...
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  This isn't what I'm proposing at all. I do get his points, which are sincerely made, but I have also been thinking about this for decades and put in a lot of time in participation and advocacy at all levels of the political process. I'm proposing getting rid of legislatures and the whole legislative process and having the legal code publicly accessible for editing by the public. It would be on a blockchain (for verifiability purposes), and there would a derivative graph (for functional evaluation purposes - quite necessary because the whole meaning of a law could be changed by a relatively tiny textual edit like 'you must do X' -> 'you must not do X'). Up to now most network analysis of law has been applied to the legal infrastructure that grows around individual cases and treating legal code itself as axiomatic; consider, rather, analysis of the code's own network properties as tremulously explored in section VI herein: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1246&context=jbtl http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... The most immediate benefit of fully graphing the constitution/code/cases ecosystem would be the possibility of a serious pruning, to address the problem first pointed out in The Republic of a surfeit of laws that grows to such complexity that it crowds out confident understanding by the citizenry. We are quite a long way from replacing our existing legislative technology with a publically edited version, but the time to start exploring this is now, given the increasingly precarious state of our institutions and the widening asymmetry between our technological and legislative capacities. Put another way, we are innovating aster than our legal or political systems can keep up, and absent a consensus or voluntary dissensus on the social deployment of such innovation, it is more likely to be weaponized than any other outcome.

tom_mellior 7y ago

Are the amendments really meant to be inserted at unspecified points in the main text? I never thought of them like this, and it doesn't always work well here. Most glaringly, there is the part in https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/7f340829cfc2ea844de1adfa4d9618d2adb6f932 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/7f... in the article talking about the President's powers, saying "The President shall have Power to [...] He shall from time to time [...]" and the diff inserts "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." between these sentences. This doesn't work at all, not only because this amendment has nothing to do with the President's powers, but especially because the "He" starting the next sentence has nothing more to refer to. Of course this would be a lot more boring if the amendments were just tucked on at the end, but I'm afraid reality is just boring here.

skissane 7y ago
> Are the amendments really meant to be inserted at unspecified points in the main text? The US constitution is unusual in leaving the main text unchanged and appending amendments at the end. Most countries don't do that. For example, Australia's constitution [1] has been amended several times since it was first adopted in 1900. But, it is amended by changing the text of existing sections, inserting new sections or subsections (examples: section 105A, subsection 51(xxiiiA)), and deleting entire sections (example: section 127). [1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution.aspx https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practi...
- cyphar 7y ago
  Most notably the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th, but both texts are still present in the amendments section of the US Constitution.
he_the_great 7y ago
The Bill of Rights is more additional than modification. The president is the commander an chief of the military, it seems reasonable he would not be allowed to quarter his troops in peoples homes. Take a look at this one https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/0cdbb927a04363d0bfd61bcfa35954e873f6dd91 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/commit/0c...

s_dev 7y ago

Irish Constitution as a git repo with the commits as amendments. https://github.com/adrian/irish-constitution/commits/master https://github.com/adrian/irish-constitution/commits/master

Buetol 7y ago
Also french Constitution here: https://github.com/Assemblee-Citoyenne/constitution-francaise-4-octobre-1958 https://github.com/Assemblee-Citoyenne/constitution-francais...

mikorym 7y ago

This is pretty funny. I had something vaguely similar happen to me, although not nearly as major. In my matric year (grade 12) I took three first languages (although I already had two first languages by grade 10). The department of education did not like it, but I did it anyway, with some encouragement from my language teachers. Fast forward to the final exams, I did well enough to make the provincial top 40, but was excluded due to what I still think was a bug in their system. Funnily enough, I walked to the provincial minister for education (later the national Minister of Health) and told him what happened. For a short while I was a radio celebrity due to the minister personally telling people "Look, this white boy got a B in Sepedi so you guys really should stop complaining and do better." [1] The error was not corrected and I was actually at the ceremony by chance for having gotten best in English in the province. I also randomly got a call from some trust and got about $100 for my creative writing essay. In any case I guess the whole radio thing was more amusing to me and actually was a better prize in the end. [1] In South Africa, a B is 70%—79%; I had gotten 76%.

za-correct 7y ago
Edit: This is meant to be a comment on the latest commit—the 200 year old ammendment that got ratified in 1992, essentially due to a C being awarded for an essay about how the 200 year old ammendment could be ratified.
mikorym 7y ago
Note: this is now a duplicate, happy if mods remove this.

thrownaway954 7y ago

Man I wish ever bill and law was under version control so you could do a git blame

baroffoos 7y ago
There is rarely a single person behind changes though. You would have to show a list showing the person who proposed it, the people who requested changes to it and the people who voted for it.
- eru 7y ago
  The actual writing of the words is usually outsourced. Quite a few people are involved in that. Clerks, lobbyists, lawyers, etc. Even the reading of the laws that lawmakers vote on is outsourced. (Ie lawmakers often don't read what they vote on.)
  - thrownaway954 7y ago
    dude... stop over thinking it.
  - he_the_great 7y ago
    That is why you have merge request approvers and the merger. The work can be authored by many because each makes small contributions. You can even have multiple protected branches where "policy makers" merge the work from their lawyer.

mxfh 7y ago

ccc Essen did a quite sophisticated project in 2013 regarding the German Grundgesetz (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5756354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5756354) https://github.com/c3e/DocPatch https://github.com/c3e/DocPatch docpatch genereates neat versioned markdown like this: https://github.com/c3e/grundgesetz https://github.com/c3e/grundgesetz now also here with the rest of german law text: https://github.com/bundestag/grundgesetz https://github.com/bundestag/grundgesetz

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

arminiusreturns 7y ago

As a staunch Constitutionalist, I love this.

all_blue_chucks 7y ago

Most of the constitution is missing here. To properly compile the constitution, the dependencies, such as supreme court rulings defining terms, must be included. I don't see those deps modeled in this repo.

gamblor956 7y ago
Case law interpreting the Constitution is part of constitutional law, but is not part of the Constitution itself. You can thank the British for that.
- lmkg 7y ago
  The Constitution uses a convention-over-configuration approach in almost all respects. Quite a lot of the actual effect are dependent on the build environment. Attempting to execute a source-identical Constitution outside of a Common Law context is not guaranteed to produce the same results, and is probably outright undefined behavior.
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  You should thank them everyday. Common law is the secret power of a good legal system (Speaking as an American lawyer, of course). In non-common law systems, extra-judicial experts (e.g., law professors) have too much weight in interpreting laws. If a legal hair is to be split, a common law court should do it. And, the court's holding should have precedence until a democratic legislature with jurisdiction over the issue says otherwise.
  - eru 7y ago
    In practice, Common Law jurisdictions and Civil Law Jurisdictions are not so different these days. (Democratic) legislation is an intruder to Common Law. And on the other hand, Civil Law systems give some at least informal weight to precedence. I don't quibble with your description of the idealized versions. See also http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo... for some alternative systems of law.

RocketSyntax 7y ago

I've got an issue with this one about muskets. https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/issues/5 https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/issues/5

bacondude3 7y ago
Among other problems with the sentiment you expressed, it should be clear to anyone that the 2A has always been intended to cover far more than just muskets. At the time the 2nd Amendment was created, rifles were already in popular use and were vastly superior to muskets since they could be shot far more accurately and were able to be reloaded faster than muskets. Saying it only covers primitive rifles (compared to modern tech) would still be inaccurate, but slightly less so. Under a reasonable interpretation, whether one supports the 2nd Amendment or not, "Arms" covers (at least) anything an individual U.S. soldier might use in war; this includes full-auto weapons, suppressors, night-vision goggles, body armor, grenades.[1] [1]: If we were shipping items to a foreign country to help them in war, would a news editor be comfortable using the term "Arms" in the headline? If so, the 2A probably protects its ownership by American citizens.
- mullen 7y ago
  Not even close. What we would call modern rifles were not invented until 1890's, with semi-auto and fully auto rifles not invented until about 1910 and not widely available until the 1930's. The minie ball was not invented until 1830's and did not see wide use until the American Civil war and after in the 1860's. The Founding Fathers were working with muskets and only muskets, they never imagined that the average person could own a AR15 (M4).
  - calibas 7y ago
    Wikipedia says rifles were used during the Revolutionary War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle#Historical_overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle#Historical_overview They were more accurate than muskets, but slower loading, so muskets were preferred.
  - 7y ago

secfirstmd 7y ago

I did something like this a few weeks ago when I put the Irish constitution on a public Google document and invited people to make suggestions and edits that may have to be made in the event of a reunification of Ireland situation. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJDjikCo4IHtEOcrEyNVIZeVcTr8oelYeZFWqNavdfA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJDjikCo4IHtEOcrEyNVIZeV...

durnygbur 7y ago

Why legal professionals are not using version control goddamit?! It's exactly the tool they need. Just recently worked with a lawyer who was negotiating settlement agreement on my behalf. The agreement in MS Word, edits highlighted with a color background, change requests in the body of the email - after 2-3 rounds of corrections reaching the other party nobody is able to keep a track of anything anymore. Seriously? Years of studies, prestigious profession, peoples' careers and lives at the stake, and this is how you work?!

notelonmusk 7y ago
cognitive load
- durnygbur 7y ago
  They same applies to software professionals who just would like "to code". Yet, the leverage of distributed version control proves to be exponential in the end.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    It really doesn't. In software, you need to track versions because you keep everything in multiple files, and you're making changes to multiple files, and you can have regressions with each new version. In a negotiated legal document, you have just the one authoritative version: the offer you've sent to the other party (or the counter-offer they've sent back to you). For lawyers, this takes the form of edits to the document as highlighted by the Track Changes feature. (Prior versions are basically irrelevant except for historical interest.) And even then, the document going back and forth isn't even the executed (aka "production") document, it's just the development version. Once the document is executed, the development versions get deleted because the executed document is the only truth legally and so prior versions absolutely do not matter.
    - durnygbur 7y ago
      One can equally think of the entire code base as a single document, and of the release version as an executed document. In the long run the non-release repository states don't matter that much either, they're just helpful for anyone willing to gain an insight on why the things work the way they do.

gnrlbzik 7y ago

This is just awesome, i mean why not. Git -> history. This is great idea for other historical writings!

Buetol 7y ago

If you're curious of the origin of each word, a word-by-word "git blame", I just made a visualization of that [1]. For example, "We the people" comes from the draft by Morris. Also, somebody else did the work a few years ago [2], would be interesting to compare them. [1]: https://dam.io/word-blame-US-constitution/word-blame-by-commit.html https://dam.io/word-blame-US-constitution/word-blame-by-comm... [2]: https://github.com/anthonygarvan/theconstitution https://github.com/anthonygarvan/theconstitution

rcardo11 7y ago

I love HN

joshiefishbein 7y ago

This is precisely what Clay Shirky was talking about back in 2012 in his talk "How the Internet Will One Day Transform Government": https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_one_day_transform_government https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_... Now if we could only move our legislators' legislative processes into git...

r00fus 7y ago
First we have to remove tech troglodytes from government by voting for sane replacements. Only then can we discuss rational advances to tech in government. I see this as a distinct possibility if there is a wave election in 2020 with new voices who are open to actual non-lobbyist reform.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > First we have to remove tech troglodytes from government by voting for sane replacements. Only then can we discuss rational advances to tech in government. No, first “we” have to learn to talk about things that matter to most citizens, which tech in government, as such, is not. You need to talk to the things that can be delivered, tech is just a means to deliver them.
- turk73 7y ago
  Yes! We must rip open the dark havens and sniff out the entrenched interests and shady operators. We need open government, not the back-room deals one we have now. Lobbying and the MIC have led us to ruin. I don't give peaceful outcomes much hope because Americans taken as a whole are far too ignorant and ill-informed. Reform will only come from the barrel of the gun and on the end of the rope as it always has. Or we will continue in chains as we do right now.

kethinov 7y ago

Someone submit a pull request to abolish the Senate, reform the House into a mixed-member proportional parliamentary system, mandate all state legislatures do the same, and replace the Electoral College with a ranked choice popular vote. One of the worst things about growing up in America is being inundated with propaganda about how we should revere the founding fathers only to grow up and realize that much-revered Constitution is riddled with bugs and badly needs refactoring to accord with modern best practices.

simplecomplex 7y ago
The Senate is more necessary than ever in this age of unconstitutional and almost unlimited exercise of federal power. The Senate ensures less populous states have an equal vote in our united (federated) states.
- CameronNemo 7y ago
  The Senate ensures that representatives of as little as 7.42% of the US population can prevent a fascist president from being removed from office.
  - simplecomplex 7y ago
    The number of representatives apportioned for each state does not dictate how they vote on any particular issue. The Senate has existed long before our current president. The purpose of the Senate is to give all states equal suffrage in the legislature. Article 5 of the constitution states “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.“
  - sincerely 7y ago
    Literally every president since I was born has been fascist in some way or another. The senators aren't the problem here.
RocketSyntax 7y ago
Senate prevents true democracy aka mob rule.

geggam 7y ago

Always amazes me that so many people think the constitution grants people the rights. The constitution grants the govt rights. The people have all the rights not expressly forbidden by law. Law enforcement seriously lags in this as well

diminoten 7y ago
What really matters is what rights the people with the guns are willing to give you...
- geggam 7y ago
  Which is the reason the 2nd amendment was written. The founders knew politics 101. Violence is required.
  - diminoten 7y ago
    Well, it was. Now, not so much.
    - whatthesmack 7y ago
      I assume you're responding to the GP's "Violence is required." Perhaps actual violence is not required now, but the threat of violence is still just as real and necessary.
      - diminoten 7y ago
        Nope and nope. The threat of violence from the people is not real in the US any longer, nor is it necessary.
        geggam 7y ago
        Interesting, if you think this is true, speed 5mph over the limit and refuse to follow directions from the officer. eg dont pull over Let me know how the violence thing doesn't happen in a victimless crime.

tmsh 7y ago

What I like about this so far is you can see that organic moment when the phrase 'United States of America' is born.

zcopley 7y ago

Is there a Patriot Act PR?

komali2 7y ago
It was force pushed before code review.

nyxtom 7y ago

This needs to be done for congress and law in general. Merges done with presidential and congressional :shipit:

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jrobn 7y ago

—We The People [..] +The President [..] commit by _Trump_ November 2nd, 11:59pm 2020

jeffdavis 7y ago

It's unfortunate that the issues are being used to make non-serious amendment proposals.

komali2 7y ago
I think that's the best part
he_the_great 7y ago
It is fine, this isn't a legal platform, the issues are being labeled and later closed.

nyxtom 7y ago

Is there a way to automate this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1569/text/pl?overview=closed https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1569... ---------------------------- To amend title 28, United States Code, to add Flagstaff and Yuma to the list of locations in which court shall be held in the judicial district for the State of Arizona. <<NOTE: Aug. 9, 2019 - [H.R. 1569]>> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. DISTRICT COURTS IN THE JUDICIAL DISTRICT FOR THE STATE OF ARIZONA. Section 82 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking ``Globe, Phoenix, Prescott, and Tucson'' and inserting ``Flagstaff, Globe, Phoenix, Prescott, Tucson, and Yuma''. -------------------------- Note the use of "striking" and "inserting" which is basically a diff. The reference doc is here https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title28-section84&num=0&edition=prelim https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim... One possible low hanging fruit would be to automatically at least create diffs for these type of situations? Thoughts? Perhaps create a script just for this: https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B%22congress%22%3A%22116%22%2C%22source%22%3A%22legislation%22%2C%22search%22%3A%22amend%20united%20states%20code%22%7D&searchResultViewType=expanded https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B%22congress%22%3A%22116...

mizzao 7y ago

So are pull requests to this repo going to have to be implemented with rebases and force pushes?

he_the_great 7y ago
At this point yes. But that is for historical in accuracy, like the 12 amendment being added twice. Restructuring and formatting can come in as post edits. There is currently a rewrite in the works.

smitty1e 7y ago

Now do all pending legislation in a publicly visible, anonymous, read-only repo. Branches and commits are done under accounts tied to elected officials (though clearly their staffs mash the keys). We could have AI doing actual work of monitoring WHAT THE WHAT is going on. Hence the unlikelihood of this ever happening. Plus the reality that legislation is mostly a requirements document anymore, with the real work occurring in the Executive in the form of regulation concocted by unelected bureaucrats.

jxramos 7y ago

I would love love love to see this effort individually applied to the French and EU constitutions. I've heard the EU constitution is very bloated and gets into all sorts of minutiae. I've heard the French constitution has undergone a great deal of modifications across a span of many republics. These two examples I've heard about in the context of being ridiculed in some comedic comments by some pundits and I always wanted to substantiate whether the substance of those jests was fair and accurate or exaggerated. Converting these two constitutional histories to Git would be incredibility insightful, probably even worthy of crowd funding.

umanwizard 7y ago
The current French constitution was written entirely from scratch in 1958. Saying it’s been modified a lot is a bit muddled. What actually happened is that the old constitutions are no longer in force and entirely new ones came into effect. The 1958 constitution is France’s fifth (not counting constitutional monarchies), which is why the current French regime is called the “fifth Republic”.

etxm 7y ago

Wait a second. Are you telling me these motherfuckers haven’t made a commit in three years? How do they still have a fucking job.

socrates1024 7y ago

pretty much what we use at zcash foundation https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/about https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/about

thanatos_dem 7y ago

The git metadata should be updated with the approximate time stamps of when the changes were made. I’ve long wanted to try to do this type of thing with the US code of law. Beyond just being cool to look through, I think it’d make a lot of accountability of lawmakers more clear, since tooling to parse and gain insights from git repos are plentiful.

starpilot 7y ago

The Constitution is just a piece of paper.

dheera 7y ago

Too bad the "amendments" to the constitution are all really just "appendments" tacked on to the end rather than actual amends to the main body of the text, which would make the Git repo more interesting.

he_the_great 7y ago
The repo does edit the original document. The original amendment text is included in a separate file, but is not the purpose of the commit.

ComodoHacker 7y ago

Nitpick. On a local Git they could've reproduced it with actual dates and names.

shpx 7y ago

The fact that GitHub marks the initial commits as 2016, and says 48 years ago when you click on one, even though it clearly says 1787 in the commit message makes me sad. All these 6 figure salaries and we still can't write code that handles dates. How does someone look at a date and think it should only have two digits? How's it possible that someone could look at a system that only stores enough time for 68 years in future and think that's fine? Why is so much code written with the assumption that a year is a four digit number? The passage of time is guaranteed and yet programmers are somehow constantly surprised that it happens. The world is 14 billion years old and will exist for much much longer. Someone might need to write code dealing with any of those time periods, why do we make them expend mental effort on (what should be) such a reasonable, trivial task? We have the bits to spare. It's a strange form of collective procrastination.

zifnab06 7y ago
Github is primarily Rails/MySQL (or was last time I paid attention to any of their blogs), I'm guessing they're storing dates as a TIMESTAMP and not a DATETIME (4 bytes vs 8 bytes). GitHub's BigQuery public data set has 234,759,841 unique commits, and it appears there's 2 dates per commit (author and committer dates). So an extra ~1.8GB per master/shard group. Entirely doable but I have no idea what their scale actually is or how that translates to network throughput or anything else really.
jeromebaek 7y ago
Something about your comment rubs me the wrong way, and I think it’s a kind of toxic idealism that doesn’t acknowledge how software isn’t a mathematical object but situated in the real world. You realize 48 years ago is the Unix epoch? Circumventing this problem to admit commits that were made before 1970, which clearly has no real world use case, is over engineering at its worst. Similarly, with designing a system to last longer than 68 years. The number of tech companies that have lasted more than 68 years can be counted on one hand.
- eru 7y ago
  It would be overkill to move from 32 bits of Unix timestamps to 64 bit signed ints just for this application. But it might be a good idea in general, and then it would solve this issue as a side effect.

Subirmadhu1 7y ago

Good

rathinmadhu 7y ago

Thanks you

ptah 7y ago

arguably this would be even more useful for the patchwork of laws and conventions that make up the british constitution

varshithr 7y ago

For a constitution, it's pretty readable.

wheybags 7y ago

> With the exception of the commits made in 1971, the year was actually 1791, I follow the simple path of ignoring the least significant digit. So 1996 means 196?as I chop off the 19, the year 1000 is implied and then tack on the next two significant digits of the year which is 96 and leaves off the specific year. What? I have no idea what you mean by this.

cormorant 7y ago
It means: fakeyear = Math.floor((realyear - 1000) / 10) + 1900 or equivalently approxrealyear = (fakeyear - 1900) * 10 + 1000 except that 1791 is represented as 1971 as a special case because it's a nice anagram (it should have been 1979).

airnomad 7y ago

I was kinda surprised to see only one pull request

known 7y ago

Time to amend it to counter Globalization

anilakar 7y ago

George says that every American should have a vacuum cleaner in their basement!

romacamehrniazi 7y ago

foobar_ 7y ago

Revolution == Rewrite. Ammendment == Patch. New Gov == Refactor. This kinda makes it easy to see how a simple system turns to shit over the long run.

nestorD 7y ago

Seem like a perfect use case for Git History : https://github.githistory.xyz/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution/blob/master/Constitution.md https://github.githistory.xyz/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitutio...

werber 7y ago

Legit obsessed with idea, merge This into master please

turk73 7y ago

I think government literacy is very important and is lacking badly in the US. Our education system is a joke and history is at the forefront of the joke. I know this first hand because I am having to back-fill and bolster all the lessons for my children because the schools have watered down the curricula to an alarming degree. History and handwriting seem to have suffered the most. Our big problem is that we have too many laws and they are far too difficult for regular people to understand. On top of that, there exists an administrative state that has regulatory authority and can re-interpret laws to suit their whims. Laws are politicized, government institutions are weaponized for political purposes. Essentially, we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic at all because it has been purposefully eroded and undermined and done over such a long period of time (in lockstep with the near total devaluation of our currency) that few have taken note of the ominous situation we find ourselves in today. We are primed for revolution and it will only take the disruption of just-in-time food deliveries for a short time to foment total chaos. Although to be honest, maybe the food disruption would be plenty regardless of our tentative legal situation.

aristophenes 7y ago

This is cool, but I was a little disappointed to see the amendments as just commits. Should have been pull requests, with all the proposed amendments in there, with arguments about them, most of the PRs closed, only a few getting merged :)

Balgair 7y ago

How do The Federalist Papers fit into it? [0] Given that most states and the US Federal system use the Common Law method of judicial determination, The Federalist Papers act as an important method of interpretation of the intent of the original lawmakers. Are they 'comments' on the law then? What about the The Anti-Federalist Papers? [1] Though less well known, they are still very important to determination of the Constitution in our current government. Also, pull requests? Though not every tiny little court case and high school essay that relies on the 1st Amendment needs to be recorded, it would be great to see what the various supreme court justices have pulled and when. To be clear: I love this project and this idea! Super great job to the creators! You all rock! [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers

dmix 7y ago

An interesting backstory on the 27th: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_Grab_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_Grab_Act Politicians never change! They've gotten better at this trick by making the bills 1000 pages long, while adding last minute changes.

Apocryphon 7y ago

Diff with its most notorious fork, the constitution of the Confederacy: https://jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm https://jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm

MithrilTuxedo 7y ago

I'd love to see this with US Code. Imagine getting to see a change made by a member of Congress, then a pull request to a committee branch, then a pull request to one branch of Congress, then a pull request to the other branch, and then a pull request to the US Code.

WCityMike 7y ago

This may be of interest. It was formerly only available to Senators and their staff as a 3000-page hardcover. https://constitution.congress.gov/ https://constitution.congress.gov/