Statute Link Converter

Purpose: explain how to use the Statute Link Converter in our admin panel.

A lot of regulation text includes references to sections of the Social Security Act. For example: “sections 1902(a)(23), 1902(e)(2), and 1915(a) and (b) and 1932(a)(3) of the Act”.

Here’s how to make those citations within regulation text into convenient links to US Code web pages! We also use this information for our statute reference table.

Why might I need to use this tool?

Our initial set of SSA titles is 11 (administrative topics), 16 (SSI), 18 (Medicare), 19 (Medicaid), and 21 (CHIP).

Reasons you may need to do more imports:

• We add regulation parts that contain SSA section citations in other titles, and we want to make those citations into links.
  • For example, let’s say we add a regulation part that has citations to a section in a less commonly-used title, like Section 301 in Title 3. If we haven’t uploaded the Title 3 file, that citation won’t link anywhere. We may want to import a file to create those links.
• A new law has become effective, and it added more sections to a title of the US Code. For example, Title 3 currently ends with Section 306 (42 U.S.C. 506). Let’s say we put Title 3 in our database, but in a few months a new section gets added, Section 307 (42 U.S.C. 507). Regulation text citations to Section 307 won’t link anywhere. We’ll need to upload a new version of the file to make it into a link.
• We add regulation parts that contain citations to a different Act, in the style of “Section xyz of the Act”, and we want to link those to the appropriate place. (This could happen if we added regulations related to Medicare, Indian Health Service, etc.)

How to add all the sections in a SSA title

1. Figure out what title you’re looking for. For example, Section 1902 is part of Social Security Act Title 19 (XIX).
2. Go to the GovInfo Statute Compilations list.
3. Browse to find the statute you need – in this case, scroll down to “S”, open it, and scroll down to “Social Security Act”.
4. Find the title you want, then right-click on the “USLM” button and select “Copy Link Address”. (“USLM” means United States Legislative Markup. Each USLM file contains statute text in a format that computers can process.)
5. Go to our admin panel and select “Statute Link Converters” at left.
6. Click the gray “Import Conversions” button near top right.
7. Paste your copied link into the URL field (should look something like this: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-8765/uslm/COMPS-8765.xml )
8. Type in the common name of the statute, such as “Social Security Act” or “Affordable Care Act”, that is used in regulation text (for example, as part of statements like “Section XYZ of the Social Security Act”).
9. Click the “Import Conversions” button.
10. If it tells you that some items were imported but have no name or title, open those links in new tabs so that you can fill out the missing info based on a copy of the title.
11. Briefly check the rest of the list against a copy of the title and make sure it’s not missing any sections. (One way to check is to copy that XML link, open it in your browser, and review the information.) If it’s missing something that you expected, tell the team.
12. Now you can click “Return”. You’re done!

How to add a single section

In our “Statute Link Converters” panel, the gray button labeled “Add statute link converter” allows adding a single section conversion if you need to.

For example, Title 11 has an odd case in its data file (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-8763/uslm/COMPS-8763.xml). The text of the law does not include the expected explicit connection between section number 1147 and its USC citation, so it’s appropriate for our automated converter to skip this one. If we wanted to include it anyway, we could manually add it using the “Add statute link converter” panel.