Improving access to the law is central to UniCourt’s mission to make legal data more accessible and useful.
From state and federal court records, to attorney and law firm data, judge data, and official state codes, UniCourt is committed to improving access to the law, and we are thrilled to share new updates on our ongoing work on behalf of Public.Resource.Org for the Code Improvement Commission.
New State Code Releases
We’ve been busy since our initial launch of the Code Improvement Commission GitHub repo last year, where we posted the Official Code of Georgia Annotated transformed into beautiful HTML after the landmark SCOTUS ruling that neither Georgia nor LexisNexis could claim copyright in the law.
Since our release of Georgia’s code, we’ve posted new state codes for Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and earlier this month, we also posted the state code for Kentucky.
For each state code we post through the Code Improvement Commission, we provide a state code repo with the standardized HTML code pages, the original state code .rtf files (stored via Internet Archive), and the code behind the RTF parser we created to transform the official codes from ugly .rtf files into nice-looking, accessible HTML. All of which is in the public domain with NO RIGHTS RESERVED.
Here are links to the state codes now available on GitHub:
Arkansas
Georgia
Mississippi
Tennessee
Kentucky
What’s Next
As we continue to add more official state codes onto the Code Improvement Commission GitHub repo, the next codes we’re working on transforming into beautiful HTML are Colorado and Idaho.
To help make the official state codes we’re posting online into the public domain more useful, UniCourt is also working on developing a “redline” capability to show diffs in the codes from previous versions.
The law belongs to us all. As edicts from government officials in their official capacity, whether state codes or state court records, the law in all its forms belongs to the People, and UniCourt is excited to continue this work on behalf of Public.Resource.Org to make sure that the law is truly accessible to all.
If you have any questions about this release or want to learn more about the Code Improvement Commission, please Contact Us and we’ll be in touch.