Source: US Global Legal Monitor
Today’s blog post is a guest post by Emily Frazier, a legislative data specialist in the office of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Emily has previously published Modernizing Congressional Data – Statute Compilations are a Gift to Researchers and Congress.gov: Slip Laws in BETA USLM Are Now Available for In Custodia Legis.
In September, we announced slip law texts in BETA USLM on Congress.gov. Today, we are announcing a new feature built on United States Legislative Markup (USLM): deep linking, also in BETA. You may be familiar with deep linking, which is already available on XML bill texts in earlier stages of the legislative process. Now, Congress.gov has expanded its deep linking features to work with these modern, web-optimized law texts.
Think of deep linking as a way to home in on a specific section of a bill or law text, and then share or save the link to the exact section you are looking at.
As you read a text, hover over the section you would like to share to highlight it. Click on the link icon and click “Share This” to automatically copy the direct link to your clipboard. When you open that link, you will be taken to the entire text, but the page will automatically scroll to the section that you shared. For bills that are hundreds of pages long, deep linking allows you to quickly share what you are looking at or save a section to refer to later.
On Congress.gov, some web-friendly XML bill texts are too large to function well with most browsers and devices. In those cases, Congress.gov shows a plain-text version of the bill instead. Deep linking is not available for plain-text bills. However, USLM slip law texts can be displayed up to a higher size threshold. As a result, some bills that previously could not be offered due to the length of the text now offer deep linking from the slip law text.
Be aware that USLM slip law texts and deep linking on USLM texts are in BETA on Congress.gov, and you may encounter display issues. PDF continues to provide a complete and accurate display of legislation and law texts. Deep links are not permalinks and may not provide long-term stable access to a specific text section. If you encounter issues, you can report them using the Site Feedback button in the upper right corner of any item in Congress.gov. Happy searching!
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