Datamob: law

Open State Project

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:39:32 -0500

The Open State Project collects and makes available data about U.S. state legislative activities, including bill summaries, votes, sponsorships, legislators and committees. This data is gathered directly from the states and made available in a common format for interested developers, through a RESTful API and regular data dump.

A project of Sunlight Labs.

url: http://openstates.sunlightlabs.com/

FCC License View API and Dataset

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:15:02 -0400

The FCC issues licenses for use of the United States' airwaves and other purposes. The FCC License View API provides snapshots such as the number of licenses across different services, how many licenses different entities have, and how many licenses are up for renewal in the near future.

Sample call:

http://data.fcc.gov/api/license-view/basicSearch/getLicenses?searchValue=Verizon%20Wireless&format=jsonp&callback=?

The complete set of data in the License View database is also available for download.

url: http://reboot.fcc.gov/developer/license-view-api

The New York State Senate Open Legislation Service

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:22:24 -0500

Browse, search and download legislative information from the New York State Senate. Structured legislative information available in XML, CSV and JSON formats.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

url: http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/

The Supreme Court Database

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:53:45 -0500

The Supreme Court Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1953 and 2008 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices. Available for download in CSV, R Data Format, XSLX and more.

url: http://scdb.wustl.edu/index.php

OpenCongress API

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:18:51 -0400

Programmatic access to all the data on OpenCongress, from official bill information to user-generated votes on bills. API key required.

url: http://www.opencongress.org/api

LittleSis API

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:41:20 -0400

The LittleSis API exposes the raw data used on the LittleSis website, and consists of basic information about powerful individuals and organizations ("entities"), and the relationships between them. Returns results in XML or JSON. API key required.

url: http://api.littlesis.org/

IllinoisTrack.us: Raw Data

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:00:11 -0400

The data powering IllinoisTrack.us, harvested from the Illinois General Assembly website, made available in XML. By Josh Sulkin.

url: http://www.illinoistrack.us/developers

Party Time Data Pack

Sat, 09 May 2009 18:41:13 -0400

Download a CSV of the data powering Party Time, the Sunlight Foundation's political partying database which tracks parties for members of Congress and congressional candidates.

url: http://politicalpartytime.org/data/all/

The New York Times New York State Legislature API

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:39:04 -0400

Get lists of New York State Senate and Assembly members, member details and committee information, and bill summaries and details. The data is updated twice daily from the New York State Assembly’s bill search function.

url: http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/ny_state_leg_api

New York Times Congress API Ruby Wrapper with Congresh Shell

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:56:14 -0500

An easy Ruby wrapper for the New York Times Congress API. Also provides a command shell called Congresh for interacting with the API directly. Available for download under an MIT License.

Submitted by Patrick Ewing

url: http://github.com/hoverbird/ny-times-congress/tree/master

Capitol Words API

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:04:47 -0500

The Capitol Words API provides several methods of accessing detailed information from the Capitol Words database of word frequency from the U.S. Congressional Record. Returns results in JSON and XML.

url: http://www.capitolwords.org/api/

Mobile Commons Legislative Lookup API

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:37:39 -0500

Database that matches latitude and longtitude with the U.S. congressional and state legislators for that location. Available as an API and as a standalone Rails application for download under an MIT License. By Mobile Commons.

url: http://mcommons.com/developers/legislative-lookup

The New York Times Congress API

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:21:53 -0500

Get biographical information on Congresspeople dating back to 1947 and voting records dating back to 1989 in JSON and XML. Based on information from THOMAS, senate.gov, and house.gov.

Read the announcement on Open for more information.

url: http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/congress_api/

New Zealand Legislation

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:34:42 -0400

Text of New Zealand Acts, Bills and Regulations. Their RSS feed can be put to good use.

Submitted by Rob McKinnon

url: http://legislation.govt.nz/

Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) API

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:54:07 -0400

RESTful API for querying the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network's database of "open knowledge" packages and projects.

url: http://www.ckan.net/api/rest/

TheMiddleClass.org Scorecard Data

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:43:15 -0400

Download TheMiddleClass.org's scorecard data for U.S. legislation calculated according to potential impact on the middle class. CSV format.

url: http://themiddleclass.org/csv

U.S. Copyright Renewal Records

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:25:17 -0400

U.S. copyright renewal records, downloadable as a single XML file. By Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi. Public domain.

url: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2008/06/us-copyright-renewal-records-available.html

U.S. Lobbying Databases

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:58:38 -0400

Lobbyist information, made available by the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records in accordance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). XML format.

url: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/Public_Disclosure/database_download.htm

Stanford Copyright Renewal Database

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:11:28 -0400

Downloadable dataset of 250,000 records on U.S. copyright renewal for books published between 1950 and 1995.

url: http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/page?forward=home

Doing Business: Full Data

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:21:50 -0400

Data on business regulations and their enforcement across 178 countries and selected cities. A project of the World Bank. Tables downloadable in Microsoft Excel format.

url: http://www.doingbusiness.org/CustomQuery/

U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:20:40 -0400

U.S. crime data, much of it downloadable in CSV and ASCII formats.

url: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html

Statistical Abstract of the United States

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:00:19 -0400

The U.S. Census Bureau's comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political and economic organization of the United States. Many tables downloadable in Microsoft Excel format.

url: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/

Law Commons

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:26:02 -0400

Source files and information on AltLaw.org, the full-text searchable database of U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Appellate case reports. Case reports are downloadable via FTP.

url: http://lawcommons.org/trac/

Legislative Council of California Bill Index

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:08:08 -0400

California legislative data, available in ASCII text.

url: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilindex.html

Crime Data from Ohio State University's Criminal Justice Research Center

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:39:08 -0400

Monthly crime data from 1960-2004 for over 17,000 U.S. police precincts.

url: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2008/03/crime_data_bona.html

U.S. Trademark Data

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:05:26 -0400

url: http://bulk.resource.org/trademark/

U.S. Patents, 1983-2000

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:04:52 -0400

tar.gz collections of the full text of U.S. Patents from 1983 to 2000.

url: http://bulk.resource.org/patent/

U.S. Copyright Registration Records

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:03:16 -0400

Raw data from the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.

url: http://bulk.resource.org/copyright/

Open Economics Data Store

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:02:35 -0400

Collection of datasets on current and historical topics in economics. CSV format.

url: http://openeconomics.net/store/

Grassroutes STOP SOPA widget

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:43:31 -0500

A widget enabling visitors to your website call, email, Facebook and Tweet at their congressional representatives about the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

By Drew Inglis, Nick Meyer and Tess Rinearson.

url: www.grassroutes.us/sopa

SOPA Opera

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:19:15 -0500

SOPA Opera tracks the who and the why of the Congressional debate on the on the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

By Dan Nguyen.

url: http://www.sopaopera.org/

SOPA Track

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:50:03 -0500

Find your local Representatives and Senators, how they plan to vote on the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), and track their votes as they come in.

By Randy Meech.

url: http://sopatrack.com/

OpenGovernment

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 17:49:46 -0500

OpenGovernment is a public resource for government transparency at the state, city and local levels. Track bills, votes and people, and view campaign contribution data for state legislators.

The beta version contains information for legislatures in California, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin.

Source code is available on GitHub, and the site's data sources are well documented.

A joint project of the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

url: http://opengovernment.org/

Casual Earnings of German Parliamentarians

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:03:28 -0500

This site shows the casual earnings of the Members of the German Bundestag. The data is issued in unstructured, isolated lists by the Bundestag. This site scrapes, structures and aggregates the earnings to create a better overview for German citizens.

Sorry, but the site is in German only!

Submitted by Henning Wolf

url: http://www.nebeneinkuenfte-bundestag.de

tinyThom.as

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:28:50 -0500

THOMAS is the official database of United States Congress legislative information. Links on THOMAS expire, and they're long. tinyThom.as makes them permanent, and short, and also provides links to related content on OpenCongress and GovTrack. By Asa Hopkins.

url: http://tinythom.as/

Congress Speaks

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:49:40 -0500

An exploration of the words spoken in the 110th U.S. Congress. By Periscopic.

url: http://congressspeaks.com/

IllinoisTrack.us

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:50:54 -0400

Tracking and analysis tool for the Illinois General Assembly. Track legislation, keep tabs on representatives in the Illinois House and Senate, and research the issues in the relevant committees. Details about how the site was built, and how the data is harvested from the Illinois General Assembly website, are available here. By Josh Sulkin.

url: http://www.illinoistrack.us/

Where the Money Goes

Sun, 17 May 2009 09:47:38 -0400

A tool for visualizing the contributions that political action committees (PACs) make to members of U.S. Congress, and to each other. By Mark Goetz, Mike Harmala, Debra Lauterbach and Noah Liebman.

url: http://wherethemoneygoes.org/

Filibusted

Sat, 09 May 2009 19:43:30 -0400

U.S. Senate rules allow a senator to filibuster—to speak for an indefinite period of time on any subject whatsoever. Historically, this has been used to prevent action on the measure being debated. Filibusted keeps track of filibuster actions in the Senate. By Andrew Dupont.

url: http://filibusted.us/

Party Time

Sat, 09 May 2009 18:37:19 -0400

Party Time is a database documenting the U.S. political partying circuit, tracking parties for members of Congress or congressional candidates, often thrown by lobbyists.

A project of Sunlight Foundation.

url: http://politicalpartytime.org/

Stimulus Watch

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:48:37 -0500

Find, view, sort and discuss local projects that are candidates for funding by United States federal grant programs when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passes. The projects come from the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Main Street Economic Recovery Report. Download dataset in Excel here.

url: http://stimuluswatch.org/

ReadTheStimulus.org

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:43:43 -0500

The text of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (House Stimulus Bill), made searchable with comments for each page enabled. Actual dollar appropriations from the bill have been parsed out by volunteers and entered into a Google spreadsheet.

url: http://readthestimulus.org

Richmond Sunlight

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:59:34 -0500

Website that aggregates information about Virginia's General Assembly, the lawmaking body that governs the state of Virginia. Basic metadata about every legislator is available as XML by replacing the trailing slash at the end of the legislator’s page on Richmond Sunlight with .xml. Legislators' voting records are available as a CSV download by appending votes/yyyy/csv/ to the legislator’s page.

url: http://www.richmondsunlight.com/

Capitol Words

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:57:23 -0500

Capitol Words visualizes the most frequently used words in the Congressional Record, offering an at-a-glance view of which issues U.S. lawmakers address on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. A project of Sunlight Foundation.

Also available as an API.

url: http://www.capitolwords.org/

Knowledge as Power

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:51:01 -0400

Simple, personalized website for searching and tracking bills of the Washington State Legislature. Additional tools include legalese translation, bill timelines and tools for emailing your legislators.

Submitted by Sarah Schacht

url: http://beta.knowledgeaspower.org

TheMiddleClass.org

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:36:09 -0400

Searchable and browsable analysis of U.S. legislation based on potential impact on the middle class. Uses the Legislature module for Drupal by Neil Drumm. By the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI).

url: http://themiddleclass.org/

Illegal Signs Map

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:45:47 -0400

Interactive map of illegal billboards in Toronto, Canada. Data is derived from Freedom of Information requests.

url: http://illegalsigns.ca/map/

SparkIP

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:06:06 -0400

U.S. patent search tool with clustering and visualization.

url: http://www.sparkip.com/

SpotCrime.com

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:38:37 -0400

Interactive maps of urban crime in the U.S. Registered users can receive crime alerts via email or SMS.

url: http://spotcrime.com/

D.C. Data Pipes

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:13:07 -0400

Yahoo Pipes created using public space permit, crime incident, building permit, service request, and juvenile arrests and charges data from Washington, D.C. Citywide Data Warehouse. Each pipe allows users to filter data and return results—in some cases, results are also mapped. By Frank Winstead.

url: http://pipes.yahoo.com/frank_winstead

JDLand

Mon, 12 May 2008 19:40:41 -0400

Website chronicling the redevelopment of the "Near Southeast" neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Uses data from Washington, D.C. Citywide Data Warehouse to report recent crime incidents, building permits, public space permits, service requests and real property sales.

url: http://www.jdland.com

CrimeReports.com

Mon, 12 May 2008 19:23:46 -0400

Maps crime data from cities and law enforcement agencies around the U.S. By Public Engines, Inc., a private company that provides web-based products to help government agencies share information directly with local communities.

url: http://www.crimereports.com

Oakland Crimespotting

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:52:38 -0400

Interactive map of crimes in Oakland, California.

url: http://oakland.crimespotting.org/

MAPLight.org

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:30:04 -0400

Illuminates the connection between money and politics in America, specifically the U.S. Congress and the State of California. Uses the Legislature module for Drupal by Neil Drumm. They have an API as well.

url: http://maplight.org/about

OpenCongress

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:29:22 -0400

Track U.S. bills, committees, issues affected by bills and committees, and the voting histories and activities of U.S. senators and representatives.

url: http://www.opencongress.org/