
US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits - styfle
https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution
======
nebulous1
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

~~~
koboll
>When Watson began his campaign in early 1982, he was aware of ratification by
only six states and he erroneously believed that Virginia's 1791 approval was
the last action taken by the states. He discovered in 1983 that Ohio had
approved it in 1873 as a means of protest against the Salary Grab Act and
learned in 1984 that Wyoming had done the same 6 years earlier in 1978, as a
protest against a 1977 congressional pay raise. Further, Watson did not know,
until 1997, well after the amendment's adoption, that Kentucky had ratified
the amendment in 1792. Neither did Kentucky lawmakers themselves — in Watson's
desire for a 50-state sweep, the Kentucky General Assembly post-ratified the
amendment in 1996 (Senate Joint Resolution No. 50), at Watson's request,
likewise unaware that the task had already been attended to some 204 years
earlier.

>In 2016, Zach Elkins, a professor in the UT Department of Government, became
interested in Watson's story and began to document its origins. He tracked
down Sharon Waite, who had left academia in the 1980s to work on her family's
citrus farm. Elkins suggested to Waite that they change Watson's grade. In
2017, Elkins submitted a grade change form with Waite's signature and a grade
change to "A+". In an interview with NPR, Waite stated, "Goodness, he
certainly proved he knew how to work the Constitution and what it meant and
how to be politically active, [...] So, yes, I think he deserves an A after
that effort — A-plus!" The registrar approved a grade change to "A", because
the university does not give grades higher than "A".

How has this not yet been made into a comedy?

~~~
shadowoflight
>The registrar approved a grade change to "A", because the university does not
give grades higher than "A".

It’s hilarious to me that the bureaucracy of this university couldn’t allow
even a single grade above an A in this exceptional circumstance - I wonder if
it actually came down to some hard limit in their grade keeping system, or if
some grumpy recordskeeper just said, “Nope, this is how we’ve always done
things, so this is how we will always do things.”

~~~
emptyfile
Maybe its my European mindset but I find it impossible to believe that any
school can just start inventing extra grades.

~~~
coldtea
Maybe it's my southern European mindset, but I find it totally possible.

The world is not as rigid as northern Europe thinks it is...

~~~
emptyfile
I'm from the Balkans.

~~~
coldtea
Well, if you're from the Balkans you should surely see it as totally possible!

Far more rule and law-bending is happening than that, for the possibility of
"inventing a new grade" to be really impossible/surprising.

~~~
coldtea
Case in point, I know a university case where the professor body wanted to
appoint their "own" candidate for a professorship position. The dean and
several (majority) professors had already agreed under the table, and the few
others didn't matter.

The only problem was they legally had to go through a open contest for the
position.

So when someone came up with 5x the qualifications (citations, papers,
conferences, better universities attended, etc, globally too) than their ho-
hum friend (some relative of the dean), the professor body suddenly folded the
position.

A few months later, they announced a new opening, with some specially crafted
qualifications, so that only their friend could pass.

~~~
dantondwa
I can really see this happening, unfortunately, and I actually did many times.
However, Southern bureaucracies are flexible only when they shouldn't be and
insurmountably rigid when it's actually good, reasonable, or funny to make an
exception. So, no, no extra grade for Watson here. But we might as well create
a whole new professional category for the friend of my friend.

------
durnygbur
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?!

~~~
duxup
Git is awesome.

But it's terminology is really confusing.

But yeah some layer of abstraction would be handy.

I always think of introducing it to my wife when she looses a document or
something but god damn the terminology.

~~~
jameshart
And if there's one thing that will deter lawyers, it's confusing terminology.

~~~
duxup
There are luddites and then there is the legal community.

~~~
jameshart
I think we can get them on board. Need to rebrand some things with latin
terminology, that's all. Let them file a _petitio tracto_ instead of making a
pull request.

------
crazygringo
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...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1998-dec-19-mn-55593-story.html)

~~~
ngomez
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)

------
shpx
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.

~~~
jeromebaek
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
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.

~~~
jeromebaek
Sure, but that’s a problem way down the stack, a problem for language
designers, not application developers.

~~~
eru
Well, they are also getting six figure salaries.

But in any case, eg Python supports dates before 1970 just fine. It was a
conscious decision by the application developers of git to restrict themselves
to whatever C has to offer.

------
shanecoin
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
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
they do when you use signed 64bit timestamps (or 128bit ones if you need the
nanos)

~~~
kzrdude
Unfortunately git rejects dates before 1970, at least when I set them using
GIT_AUTHOR_DATE

~~~
pault
This is especially troublesome when you need to cover up those 50 years of
procrastination on a project.

~~~
smitty1e
You say 'procrastination' I say 'The means _IS_ the end, yo!'.

------
Buetol
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-
comm...](https://dam.io/word-blame-US-constitution/word-blame-by-commit.html)

[2]:
[https://github.com/anthonygarvan/theconstitution](https://github.com/anthonygarvan/theconstitution)

------
kej
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
I had this realization like four years ago, and bought `gitvernment.org`
precisely to do this...one day.

~~~
clintonb
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)

------
identity0
JesseKPhillips was my favourite founding father. He was a genius for adding
whitespace and readme.

~~~
tiglionabbit
I kinda wish they'd rebase the repository to put that stuff in so git blame
would still give you the original authors.

------
geggam
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
What really matters is what rights the people with the guns are willing to
give you...

~~~
geggam
Which is the reason the 2nd amendment was written. The founders knew politics
101. Violence is required.

~~~
diminoten
Well, it was. Now, not so much.

~~~
whatthesmack
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
Nope and nope. The threat of violence from the people is not real in the US
any longer, nor is it necessary.

~~~
geggam
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.

~~~
diminoten
? I'm not going to shoot a cop so I can go 5mph over the speed limit if that's
what you're saying...

I'm trying to say that the threat of violence from the people isn't there
anymore, for many reasons, one of which is the huge disparity between the
military and consumer availability.

~~~
geggam
Sorry, I misread.

I disagree, recently one event has shown the violence is just under the
surface.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff)

Large groups of people went to that mans ranch just to threaten the govt.

~~~
diminoten
The government was not threatened in any meaningful way.

You're just going to disagree regardless though, aren't you?

------
tom_mellior
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/7f...](https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-
Constitution/commit/7f340829cfc2ea844de1adfa4d9618d2adb6f932) 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
> 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_practi...](https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution.aspx)

~~~
cyphar
Most notably the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th, but both texts are still
present in the amendments section of the US Constitution.

------
smitty1e
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.

------
all_blue_chucks
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
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.

~~~
pnw_hazor
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
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/LegalSystemsCo...](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm)
for some alternative systems of law.

~~~
anticensor
Fully Codified Common Law would be the best of both.

~~~
eru
What do you mean by that?

Do you mean
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Codification_(law)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wik/Codification_\(law\))
or writing law in computer code, or something else?

If the former: Codification of Common Law is an ongoing process, and I guess
will always be a bit behind the latest court rulings. (And that's by design.)

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

~~~
veddox
Yes, I loved that comment!

------
kethinov
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.

~~~
umanwizard
The Senate was a negotiated compromise to get sovereign states to agree to
join a federation. Obviously it gives some states more power — that’s the
entire reason they agreed to it.

How do you expect to get them to agree to change it? I doubt people in Alaska
or Montana think the Senate is a “bug”.

If you don’t think the structure of the federation works for your state, you
can try to get your state to secede. That’s more logical, and more likely to
succeed, than convincing others to vote against their own interest out of a
sense of “fairness”.

~~~
CameronNemo
>How do you expect to get them to agree to change it?

Believe me, I ask myself this question weekly. I don't know how it will
happen, but the federation will not thrive without that change. In fact I
would argue it is unstable currently.

>I doubt people in Alaska or Montana think the Senate is a “bug”.

I doubt people in Wyoming or Vermont consider the Senate to be fairly
represent the federation. But you will rarely catch a politician admitting
that. Oppressors will always opress, and that isn't my problem. It's theirs.
The oppressed will always resist. Everything evens out in the end.

~~~
umanwizard
You cannot claim that people in NY State and California are oppressed, since
their revealed preferences show them wanting to remain part of the federation.
If people were unhappy with the current structure, you would see large and
vibrant independence movements, whereas in actual fact those movements are a
tiny fringe.

Despite its many problems, the US is one of the most prosperous, peaceful, and
stable regions in the history of the world.

Without the Senate, the US simply wouldn’t exist (the smaller states wouldn’t
have agreed to it), and North America would by now be a few dozen independent,
competing, conflicting countries. It’s hard to imagine how that would be more
stable than the current situation.

By the way, larger groups agreeing to give disproportionate power to smaller
groups, in order to keep their union or federation together, happens all the
time. Examples off the top of my head include Canada (where Quebec is
massively overrepresented in the federal parliament), the UK (where England is
the only constituent entity without its own legislature), Bosnia (whose three
main ethnic groups split the Presidency equally despite having 50%/30%/15% of
the population), and I’m sure there are many other examples...

The Bosnian example is particularly forceful, as this superficially “unfair”
deal ended the bloodiest war in European history since WW2, in which more than
100,000 people died.

~~~
CameronNemo
>their revealed preferences show them wanting to remain part of the federation

All of them? 20% of California is still 4.5 million people.

>America would by now be a few dozen independent, competing, conflicting
countries

1\. that is not proven. alternatives could have been chosen. 2\. just because
the Senate made sense among several mostly equal population states does not
mean it makes sense today.

>Canada (where Quebec is massively overrepresented in the federal parliament)

And they have their own party. You cannot honestly believe that is an ideal
situation.

>UK (where England is the only constituent entity without its own legislature)

The Scottish National Party exists, as do unionist and separatist terrorists
in Northern Ireland.

>Bosnia (whose three main ethnic groups split the Presidency equally despite
having 50%/30%/15% of the population)

Just because that makes sense for a young democracy does not mean it makes
sense in California, a state with high cultural value given to equal voice and
representation.

>this superficially “unfair” deal ended the bloodiest war in European history
since WW2

Are you threatening war if California asserts its natural rights to self-
governance? Unionization under threat of violence is not unionization. It is
slavery.

------
jxramos
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
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”.

------
Ajedi32
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)

------
thrownaway954
Man I wish ever bill and law was under version control so you could do a git
blame

~~~
baroffoos
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
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.)

~~~
he_the_great
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.

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

------
m0sa
I wish all legislation would be stored in modern version control.

------
nyxtom
Is there a way to automate this:

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1569...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
bill/1569/text/pl?overview=closed)

\----------------------------

    
    
        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...](https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-
title28-section84&num=0&edition=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...](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)

------
mxfh
_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)

------
francisofascii
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...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Earlier_proposals_and_drafts_of_the_Amendment)
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.

------
ehayes
> ...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
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
Straddle two states with my farm ftw?

~~~
schoen
I think that will make your situation worse rather than better.

------
anigbrowl
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.

~~~
gamblor956
Based on our experience with Wikipedia, that would be the worst idea
imaginable from a social and political perspective.

The wiki would just become a series of editing wars with multiple parties
attempting to be the _last_ to edit the wiki. For any sort of sanity, you'd
need to lock down most of the wiki, putting the power in the hands of a few
editors. And then you'd have the problem of selecting the editors....which
would bring you right back to where we are today.

~~~
anigbrowl
Not at all. You'd just have to get buy-in for commit changes. There is no
editorial selection, the whole point of wikipedia is that anyone can edit it.
I am _not_ arguing that Wikipedia as-is is ready for deployment as a
legislative corpus, but that no _technical_ barrier exists to the creation of
something built along similar lines.

~~~
gamblor956
There are significant technical barriers to what you're describing.

For starters, how do you limit edits to citizens? How do you verify
citizenship? How do you handle racing commits? How do you determine "buy-in"?
How do you store the data securely? How do you secure the authoritative single
repository of all law for your jurisdiction? If distributed, how do you
determine the authoritative source? How do you trust change commits coming
from external sources such as the other distributed stores of the liki?

~~~
anigbrowl
Not really. First, I don't, only to residents. With brakes, much as W handles
edit wars. Buy-in is most likely a function of affective scope, and itself is
up for debate. On LOC.gov, eventually or using some sort of blockchain.

I don't think most of these objections are technical so much as social. Nor am
I offering it as a complete recipe ready to go; it's a proposal with very
manageable problems, certainly no worse than those Wikipedia faced when first
instantiated. You have to start somewhere.

------
omarhaneef
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
> 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
Rebase and then force-push to reset the remote

------
mikorym
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
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.

------
Balgair
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)

------
MithrilTuxedo
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.

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

~~~
he_the_great
It is fine, this isn't a legal platform, the issues are being labeled and
later closed.

------
artur_makly
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.

~~~
Mathnerd314
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
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.

~~~
testvox
But would version control solve the email issue? I guess I would still rather
get an email with a git repo or patch than I would a word document with a
revision set.

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

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

------
cpeterso
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/3c...](https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-
Constitution/commit/3cdfe67a179375d54e33b76122a70532c7915d0c)

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.

~~~
alexjm
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-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-
set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970)

------
secfirstmd
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/1lJDjikCo4IHtEOcrEyNVIZeV...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJDjikCo4IHtEOcrEyNVIZeVcTr8oelYeZFWqNavdfA/edit?usp=sharing)

------
java-man
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
Did you file an issue?

~~~
bitwize
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.

------
joshiefishbein
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_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_one_day_transform_government)

Now if we could only move our legislators' legislative processes into git...

~~~
r00fus
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
> 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.

------
wheybags
> 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
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).

------
thanatos_dem
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.

------
dmix
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.

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

------
s_dev
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
Also french Constitution here: [https://github.com/Assemblee-
Citoyenne/constitution-francais...](https://github.com/Assemblee-
Citoyenne/constitution-francaise-4-octobre-1958)

------
RocketSyntax
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
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
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).

~~~
bacondude3
> semi-auto and fully auto rifles not invented until about 1910

Not true; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun#Early_rapid-
firing...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun#Early_rapid-
firing_weapons)

> In 1777, Philadelphia gunsmith Joseph Belton offered the Continental
> Congress a "new improved gun", which was capable of firing up to twenty
> shots in five seconds [...] Congress requested that Belton modify 100
> flintlock muskets to fire eight shots in this manner

1777 was 14 years before our Bill of Rights was ratified, and 4 shots/second
is faster than an average person can fire any semi-auto weapon, including an
AR-15.

Also, do you really think the Founding Fathers didn't envision technological
advancement? Of course they couldn't have predicted exactly what our current
technology looks like, but I'm sure they saw the progression from clubs to
swords to guns and expected weapons to continue getting more effective. How
could anybody _not_ expect technology to advance over time? It's literally
been doing that since the beginning of the world.

~~~
mullen
> Not true; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun#Early_rapid-
> firing...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_gun#Early_rapid-firing..).

I should have been more clear. I meant Machine Guns that a regular person
could carry and fire without setting up a stand. Maxim and Browning had
demonstrated Machine Guns around 1880 to 1900, but they were big and heavy and
not something a single individual would carry and they clearly were not for
the civilian market.

> 1777 was 14 years before our Bill of Rights was ratified, and 4 shots/second
> is faster than an average person can fire any semi-auto weapon, including an
> AR-15.

The evidence that these guns existed is scant;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belton_flintlock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belton_flintlock)
The 4 bullets pistols are the only example they have and that idea is an old
and well known one.

> Also, do you really think the Founding Fathers didn't envision technological
> advancement? Of course they couldn't have predicted exactly what our current
> technology looks like, but I'm sure they saw the progression from clubs to
> swords to guns and expected weapons to continue getting more effective. How
> could anybody not expect technology to advance over time? It's literally
> been doing that since the beginning of the world.

You are looking at this with 21st century eyes where every 10 years the world
changes so much. The world of the Founding Fathers in 1788 was a world very
similar to the world of 1688 and 1588. The food and clothes were different and
not much else. To say that the Founding Fathers could have imagined a AR15 or
AK47 is real stretch of the imagination. I am pretty sure that if you walked
into the Constitution Convention of 1787 and laid out an AR15 and said, "One
day a young man with this weapon will walk into a school and kill 20 children
and 6 staff members with one of these and mass shootings happen with
regularity." I am pretty sure the 2nd Amendment would be a lot different and a
lot more clear.

~~~
bacondude3
I'm sorry this got so long, but I don't want to rewrite the entire thing
now...

> The evidence that these guns existed is scant

Yes, but the idea of them existing was enough to interest Congress, who tried
to order 100 of them. They backed out of their order due to the cost. If they
had existed at a reasonable price, one can assume Congress would have gone
through with their order.

> The world of the Founding Fathers in 1788 was a world very similar to the
> world of 1688 and 1588

You're discounting the technological advancement of that era just because
we've had more inventions in recent history. Innovation happened slower back
then, but there were still large improvements in technology during the
Founding Fathers' lives. Ben Franklin, who was one of the Founding Fathers
himself, invented a lot of stuff during his life.

> You are looking at this with 21st century eyes

So are you. One of the reasons American citizens haven't had to bear their
arms (some exceptions[1][2][3][4]) is because we have them and are able to use
them if necessary. Few people are willing to die for a cause, and far fewer
are willing if they have reason to expect their death will be in vain, and for
their side to lose.

People are only willing to give up the rights they have now because they don't
know what it was like without them.

> I am pretty sure that if you walked into the Constitution Convention of 1787
> and laid out an AR15 and said, "One day a young man with this weapon will
> walk into a school and kill 20 children and 6 staff members with one of
> these and mass shootings happen with regularity." I am pretty sure the 2nd
> Amendment would be a lot different and a lot more clear.

We definitely agree that the Founding Fathers would be horrified by modern
society. However, I don't think their reaction would be to limit firearm
ownership. (Probably, they would probably want to know why tax dollars are
going to the federal gov't to create public schools and why adults failed the
kid) Would they have also changed the First Amendment to limit religion to
Christian/Puritan variants? Probably not; they created the Bill of Rights to
acknowledge rights that no human can morally take from another person, since
the rights come from God*.

Ultimately, we can't prevent others from causing harm. Making black powder is
easy and cheap, and tossing some fireworks in a pressure cooker or a pipe is
something anyone can do. If we could hypothetically remove all guns from the
entire world, badguys would cause harm through other methods, such as bombings
or vehicle attacks[5]. We need to fix the root causes of these evils, not ban
the weapon(s) they currently use so we can feel good about doing something.

-

Lastly, I'm assuming you made this mistake in good faith but implying that our
priority for minimizing mass murders should be banning AR-15 style rifles is
misleading. Most mass shootings are committed with handguns[6]. So why not ban
handguns then? Because in America, guns are used in a defensive manner far
more often than they're used to murder people[7][8].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff)
(not an endorsement, but it's relevant)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Korean_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots#Korean_Americans_during_the_riots)

[5]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack)

[6]:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/06/16/why-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/06/16/why-
banning-ar-15s-and-other-assault-weapons-wont-stop-mass-shootings/)

[7]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use)

[8]: [https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-
the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-
the-u.s.-2018/tables/table-16)

------
aristophenes
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 :)

------
dheera
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
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.

------
WCityMike
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/)

------
Apocryphon
Diff with its most notorious fork, the constitution of the Confederacy:

[https://jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm](https://jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm)

------
ElijahLynn
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!

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

------
gumby
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
I'll bite...what are examples of phony bits?

~~~
gumby
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.

------
arminiusreturns
As a staunch Constitutionalist, I love this.

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

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

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

~~~
he_the_great
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.

------
socrates1024
pretty much what we use at zcash foundation
[https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/about](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/about)

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

------
werber
Legit obsessed with idea, merge This into master please

------
airnomad
I was kinda surprised to see only one pull request

------
varshithr
For a constitution, it's pretty readable.

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

------
known
Time to amend it to counter Globalization

------
dodgez
Can I fork it to make my own country?

~~~
he_the_great
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)

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

------
starpilot
The Constitution is just a piece of paper.

------
zcopley
Is there a Patriot Act PR?

~~~
komali2
It was force pushed before code review.

------
rathinmadhu
Thanks you

------
rcardo11
I love HN

------
jrobn
—We The People [..] +The President [..]

 _commit by _Trump__ November 2nd, 11:59pm 2020

------
foobar_
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.

