Computational Legal Studies, a fascinating site I’d spend more time at if I didn’t have to eat and sleep, has a zoomable visualization of the structure of HR3962, the version of the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” that just passed the House.
Also check out their article on the size of HR3962:
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.
…
Basic Information about the Length of H.R. 3962Number of words in H.R. 3962 impacting substantive law:
234,812 words (w/ generous calculation)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
Then there are the comparisons with Harry Potter, other legislation, and the Entire US Code (42 Million words, if you’re interested).
And this:
Relative Size of H.R. 3962: H.R. 3962 is roughly 1/2 of one percent of the size of the United States Code.
Tags: Affordable Health Care for America Act, Computational Legal Studies, health care, HR 3962, ObamaCare