In light of last night’s vote on H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, we decided to calculate a few numbers on the current bill. Based on the Library of Congress’s XML representation of the bill (which can be obtained here), we have calculated a number of linguistic and citation properties of the Bill. The House of Representative approved HR 3962 by a 220-215 margin. The New York Times features a useful analysis of the vote including a breakout by party and region here.
On the Sunday morning talk shows as well as in other outlets, there has been significant discussion regarding the size of H.R. 3962. Specifically, many critics have decried the length of the bill citing its 1990 pages. The bill is indeed 1990 pages as you can see if you choose to download a PDF copy of the bill.
The purpose of this post is to provide a perspective regarding the length of H.R. 3962. Those versed in the typesetting practices of the United States Congress know that the printed version of a bill contains a significant amount of whitespace including non-trivial space between lines, large headers and margins, an embedded table of contents, and large font. For example, consider page 12 of the printed version of H.R. 3962. This page contains fewer than 150 substantive words.
We believe a simple page count vastly overstates the actual length of bill. Rather than use page counts, we counted the number of words contained in the bill and compared these counts to the number of words in the existing United States Code. In addition, we consider the number of text blocks in the bill– where a text block is a unit of text under a section, subsection, clause, or sub-clause.
Number of words in H.R. 3962 impacting substantive law:
Number of total words in H.R. 3962: 363,086 words (w/ titles, tables of contents …)
Number of text blocks: 7,961
Average number of words per text block: 24.18
Average words per section: 267.03
Number of substantive words in H.R. 3962: 234,812 words
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – 257,000 words
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – 190,000 words
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – 198,000 words
Number of substantive words in Energy Bill of 2007: 157,835 words
Number of substantive words in Defense Authorization Act for 2010: 119,960 Words
H.R. 3962 is roughly 2x the Size of Medicare Rx Bill of 2003 (Given there is no public XML version of the bill, the Exact “Substantive Words” Number is not available)
Size of the United States Code: 42+ Million Words
Relative Size of H.R. 3962: H.R. 3962 is roughly 1/2 of one percent of the size of the United States Code
Number of Strikeouts: 332
Number of Inserts: 390
Number of Re-designations: 65
Social Security Act: 622 times
Public Health Service Act: 134 times
Affordable Health Care for America Act: 60 times
Indian Health Care Improvement Act: 56 times
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act: 45 times
Employee Retirement Income Security Act: 39 times
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act: 11 times
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: 7
25 U.S.C. §450. Congressional statement of findings: 38
25 U.S.C. §13. Expenditure of appropriations by Bureau: 13
42 U.S.C. §1396a(a). State plans for medical assistance: 10
42 U.S.C. §1396d(a). Definitions: 7
42 U.S.C. §2004a. Sanitation facilities: 7
Another useful measure is “hours to read aloud”: http://hearthebill.org/. HR 3200 took ~24 hours IIRC.
Kent Sjolund says:The problem is not the number of words–what makes it so difficult are the references to OTHER legislation. How can you read and understand when it “strikes out” this and “Amends that?” Unless you have printed out copies of the other bills (or want to jump back and forth), it makes NO sense! I would rather they PRINT the applicable sources as FOOTNOTES so we can at least refer to the end of the bill for clarity.
Steven King says:I would like to leave you with the thoughts of our fourth President of two terms, our Founding Father and Architect of our Constitution James Madison;
“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?”
A reasonable length should be mandated at say around 200 pages maximum for any bill! That way all the fine print and special interests would not be able to tack on their aggendas so easily. 200 pages of extra large print is a significant amount for even the most intelligent individual to digest and understand at one time and it would force congress to vote on smaller more applicable pieces of legislation.
Mark Vice says: Great post! Aida Velez says: Someone was bored when it came down to counting word for word. But, it was an informative post. Rip Snorter says:Those persons(committees) responsible for writing this bill should be hung up by their thumbs until they agree to rewrite it in layman’s terms. It is a labyrinth of goverment double-speak. Undoubtly done so to keep the American taxpayer from knowing what is truly in it.
Jon Kern says:Too bad it wasn’t compared against the US Constitution… Too bad there isn’t a timeline graph of the US Code word count versus time. Too bad there isn’t a timeline graph of the total word count for each Congress. Complexity kills.
Daniel Martin Katz, Ron Dolin & Michael Bommarito, Legal Informatics, Cambridge University Press (2021) (Edited Volume) < Cambridge >
Corinna Coupette, Janis Beckedorf, Dirk Hartung, Michael Bommarito, & Daniel Martin Katz, Measuring Law Over Time: A Network Analytical Framework with an Application to Statutes and Regulations in the United States and Germany, 9 Front. Phys. 658463 (2021) < Frontiers in Physics > < Supplemental Material >
Daniel Martin Katz, Legal Innovation (Book Forward) in Mapping Legal Innovation: Trends and Perspectives (Springer) (Antoine Masson & Gavin Robinson, eds.) (2021) < Springer >
Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz & Eric Detterman, LexNLP: Natural Language Processing and Information Extraction For Legal and Regulatory Texts in Research Handbook on Big Data Law (Edward Elgar Press) (Roland Vogl, ed.) (2021) < Edward Elgar > < Github > < SSRN > < arXiv >
Daniel Martin Katz, Corinna Coupette, Janis Beckedorf & Dirk Hartung, Complex Societies and the Growth of the Law, 10 Scientific Reports 18737 (2020) < Nature Research > < Supplemental Material >
Edward D. Lee, Daniel Martin Katz, Michael J. Bommarito II, Paul Ginsparg, Sensitivity of Collective Outcomes Identifies Pivotal Components, 17 Journal of the Royal Society Interface 167 (2020) < Journal of the Royal Society Interface > < Supplemental Material >
Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz & Eric Detterman, OpenEDGAR: Open Source Software for SEC EDGAR Analysis, MIT Computational Law Report (2020) < MIT Law > < Github >
J.B. Ruhl & Daniel Martin Katz, Mapping the Law with Artificial Intelligence in Law of Artificial Intelligence and Smart Machines (ABA Press) (2019) < ABA Press >
J.B. Ruhl & Daniel Martin Katz, Harnessing the Complexity of Legal Systems for Governing Global Challenges in Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity (Edward Elgar) (2019) < Edward Elgar >
J.B. Ruhl & Daniel Martin Katz, Mapping Law’s Complexity with ‘Legal Maps’ in Complexity Theory and Law: Mapping an Emergent Jurisprudence (Taylor & Francis) (2018) < Taylor & Francis >
Michael Bommarito & Daniel Martin Katz, Measuring and Modeling the U.S. Regulatory Ecosystem, 168 Journal of Statistical Physics 1125 (2017) < J Stat Phys >
Daniel Martin Katz, Michael Bommarito & Josh Blackman, A General Approach for Predicting the Behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States, PLoS ONE 12(4): e0174698 (2017) < PLoS One >
J.B. Ruhl, Daniel Martin Katz & Michael Bommarito, Harnessing Legal Complexity, 355 Science 1377 (2017) < Science >
J.B. Ruhl & Daniel Martin Katz, Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Legal Complexity, 101 Iowa Law Review 191 (2015) < SSRN >
Paul Lippe, Daniel Martin Katz & Dan Jackson, Legal by Design: A New Paradigm for Handling Complexity in Banking Regulation and Elsewhere in Law, 93 Oregon Law Review 831 (2015) < SSRN >
Paul Lippe, Jan Putnis, Daniel Martin Katz & Ian Hurst, How Smart Resolution Planning Can Help Banks Improve Profitability And Reduce Risk, Banking Perspective Quarterly (2015) < SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz, The MIT School of Law? A Perspective on Legal Education in the 21st Century, Illinois Law Review 1431 (2014) < SSRN > < Slides >
Daniel Martin Katz & Michael Bommarito, Measuring the Complexity of the Law: The United States Code, 22 Journal of Artificial Intelligence & Law 1 (2014) < Springer > < SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz, Quantitative Legal Prediction – or – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Preparing for the Data Driven Future of the Legal Services Industry, 62 Emory Law Journal 909 (2013) < SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz, Joshua Gubler, Jon Zelner, Michael Bommarito, Eric Provins & Eitan Ingall, Reproduction of Hierarchy? A Social Network Analysis of the American Law Professoriate, 61 Journal of Legal Education 76 (2011) < SSRN >
Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz & Jillian Isaacs-See, An Empirical Survey of the Written Decisions of the United States Tax Court (1990-2008), 30 Virginia Tax Review 523 (2011) < SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz, Michael Bommarito, Juile Seaman, Adam Candeub, Eugene Agichtein, Legal N-Grams? A Simple Approach to Track the Evolution of Legal Language in Proceedings of JURIX: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (2011) < SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz & Derek Stafford, Hustle and Flow: A Social Network Analysis of the American Federal Judiciary, 71 Ohio State Law Journal 457 (2010) < SSRN >
Michael Bommarito & Daniel Martin Katz, A Mathematical Approach to the Study of the United States Code, 389 Physica A 4195 (2010) < SSRN > < arXiv >
Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz & Jonathan Zelner, On the Stability of Community Detection Algorithms on Longitudinal Citation Data in Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Applications of Social Network Analysis (2010) < SSRN > < arXiv >
Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz, Jonathan Zelner & James Fowler, Distance Measures for Dynamic Citation Networks 389 Physica A 4201 (2010) < SSRN > < arXiv >
Michael Bommarito, Daniel Martin Katz & Jonathan Zelner, Law as a Seamless Web? Comparing Various Network Representations of the United States Supreme Court Corpus (1791-2005) in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (2009) < SSRN >
Marvin Krislov & Daniel Martin Katz, Taking State Constitutions Seriously, 17 Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy 295 (2008)
Daniel Martin Katz, Derek Stafford & Eric Provins, Social Architecture, Judicial Peer Effects and the ‘Evolution’ of the Law: Toward a Positive Theory of Judicial Social Structure, 23 Georgia State Law Review 975 (2008) SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz, Institutional Rules, Strategic Behavior and the Legacy of Chief Justice William Rehnquist: Setting the Record Straight on Dickerson v. United States, 22 Journal of Law & Politics 303 (2006) < SSRN >
Daniel Martin Katz, Michael Bommarito, Tyler Sollinger & James Ming Chen, Law on the Market? Abnormal Stock Returns and Supreme Court Decision-Making < SSRN > < arXiv > Slides >
Daniel Martin Katz, Michael Bommarito & Josh Blackman, Crowdsourcing Accurately and Robustly Predicts Supreme Court Decisions < SSRN > < arXiv > Slides >
Daniel Martin Katz & Michael Bommarito, Regulatory Dynamics Revealed by the Securities Filings of Registered Companies < Slides >
Pierpaolo Vivo, Daniel Martin Katz & J.B. Ruhl (Editors), The Physics of the Law: Legal Systems Through the Prism of Complexity Science, Special Collection for Frontiers in Physics (2021 Forthcoming) < Frontiers in Physics >
Corinna Coupette, Dirk Hartung, Janis Beckedorf, Maximilian Bother & Daniel Martin Katz, Law Smells – Defining and Detecting Problematic Patterns in Legal Drafting < SSRN >
Ilias Chalkidis, Abhik Jana, Dirk Hartung, Michael Bommarito, Ion Androutsopoulos, Daniel Martin Katz & Nikolaos Aletras, LexGLUE: A Benchmark Dataset for Legal Language Understanding in English < arXiv > < SSRN >