IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v389y2010i19p4195-4200.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A mathematical approach to the study of the United States Code

Author

Listed:
  • Bommarito, Michael J.
  • Katz, Daniel M.

Abstract

The United States Code (Code) is a document containing over 22 million words that represents a large and important source of Federal statutory law. Scholars and policy advocates often discuss the direction and magnitude of changes in various aspects of the Code. However, few have mathematically formalized the notions behind these discussions or directly measured the resulting representations. This paper addresses the current state of the literature in two ways. First, we formalize a representation of the United States Code as the union of a hierarchical network and a citation network over vertices containing the language of the Code. This representation reflects the fact that the Code is a hierarchically organized document containing language and explicit citations between provisions. Second, we use this formalization to measure aspects of the Code as codified in October 2008, November 2009, and March 2010. These measurements allow for a characterization of the actual changes in the Code over time. Our findings indicate that in the recent past, the Code has grown in its amount of structure, interdependence, and language.

Suggested Citation

  • Bommarito, Michael J. & Katz, Daniel M., 2010. "A mathematical approach to the study of the United States Code," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(19), pages 4195-4200.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:19:p:4195-4200
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2010.05.057
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437110004875
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2010.05.057?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott E. Page, 2008. "Uncertainty, Difficulty, and Complexity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(2), pages 115-149, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bokwon Lee & Kyu-Min Lee & Jae-Suk Yang, 2019. "Network structure reveals patterns of legal complexity in human society: The case of the Constitutional legal network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, January.
    2. Michael J Bommarito II & Daniel Martin Katz, 2016. "Measuring the temperature and diversity of the U.S. regulatory ecosystem," Papers 1612.09244, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2017.
    3. Pontus Braunerhjelm & Johan E. Eklund, 2014. "Taxes, tax administrative burdens and new firm formation," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(1), pages 1-11, February.
    4. Steffen Hurka & Maximilian Haag, 2020. "Policy complexity and legislative duration in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(1), pages 87-108, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Miguel Vazquez, 2018. "Institutional dynamics in an economy seen as a complex adaptive system," IEFE Working Papers 104, IEFE, Center for Research on Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    2. Bergström, Johan & van Winsen, Roel & Henriqson, Eder, 2015. "On the rationale of resilience in the domain of safety: A literature review," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 131-141.
    3. Furness, Mark, 2018. "Strategic policymaking and the German aid programme in the MENA region since the Arab uprisings," IDOS Discussion Papers 5/2018, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:19:p:4195-4200. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.