Modernizing Congressional Data – Statute Compilations are a Gift to Researchers

The following post is a guest post by Emily Frazier, a legislative data specialist in the office of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). 

An additional legislative resource has been prominently featured on the Congress.gov homepage: Statute Compilations, prepared by the Office of the Legislative Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives (HOLC) and published in partnership with the Government Publishing Office (GPO) on GovInfo.

A snapshot of the Statute Compilations tab on the Congress.gov homepage.

A Statute Compilation consists of its original act plus amendments made to such act (if any) from subsequently enacted public law(s). Every compilation amended by at least one additional law has a currency note indicating the last update. An overall currency note indicates the latest enacted law through which all compilations have been updated, which helps users know how up-to-date a compilation is compared to a recently enacted law. Despite their similar name, Statute Compilations are different from Statutes at Large. Per the notes on GovInfo, Statute Compilations are unofficial documents that serve as a combined view of select “public laws that either do not appear in the U.S. Code or that have been classified to a title of the U.S. Code that has not been enacted into positive law.” Positive law has a specific meaning when referring to the U.S. Code such that positive law titles are themselves federal statutes.

Another fascinating aspect of Statute Compilations is their titles. Not only can the text of laws be amended, but the short titles that are used as a shorthand for referring to laws can be amended as well. When legislation is first enacted, it may not have a short title, but over time it may become commonly referred to with a particular short title. Later legislation may amend the statute to officially add that short title to the text—this can make a big difference when it comes to researching and locating landmark laws! For example, the law commonly referred to as the Civil Rights Act of 1968, PL 90-284, was not officially designated with that short title until 20 years after it was enacted when PL 100-430 amended the law to add the short title to the text. This is reflected in the Statute Compilation for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which is a compilation of PL 90-284, updated with amended text from PL 100-430 and several other enacted laws that amend the same statute. Statute compilations can serve as a means of tracking down the original act, even if the short title was added later. On GovInfo, Statute Compilations are sorted alphabetically by their display title, and are searchable by title, as well as public law citation and keywords.

HOLC and GPO worked together to publish Statute Compilations using the United States Legislative Markup (USLM) XML schema. Statute Compilations in USLM are both human and machine-readable and are interoperable with other legislative documents. For example, bill texts published with USLM can have embedded hyperlinks to other resources, like the U.S. Code and the Federal Register, which can then be displayed as hyperlinked textual references when bill texts are displayed on a webpage using a stylesheet. At the same time, USLM can also be used to generate printable renditions of legislative documents, making it more efficient to produce these documents as well as improving consistency across formats. You can learn more about the USLM project on its GitHub space. The Congress.gov team supports the cross-agency efforts to produce a more extensive USLM roadmap and continues to support the ongoing effort required for interoperability within the legislative data partner ecosystem to create and implement USLM data standards. In the future, Congress.gov plans to explore ingesting and displaying the USLM renditions of legislative documents.

From the Congress.gov homepage, you can access Statute Compilations by clicking on the link under “Bill Searches and Lists”, just below the search bar on the right side. Today, we are highlighting easier access to Statute Compilations on GovInfo. Stay tuned, though, as we explore the possibility of incorporating Statute Compilations into Congress.gov as a future enhancement. Happy searching!

Source: https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2025/01/modernizing-congressional-data-statute-compilations-are-a-gift-to-researchers/?loclr=eaiclb