Library of Congress Removes Constitution Content

Constitutional Text Disappearance Explained by Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has provided a more detailed account regarding the temporary removal of significant portions of the U.S. Constitution from its official online platform.

Initial Reports of Missing Sections

As previously covered by TechCrunch, substantial parts of Section 8, alongside the complete text of Sections 9 and 10, were absent from Article 1 of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s official website for a period of time.

These deletions, impacting sections concerning congressional authority, state rights, and due process protections, raised concerns, particularly given recent statements from the Trump administration regarding the potential suspension of habeas corpus.

Initial Response: A Coding Error

Following reports of the missing content, the Library of Congress initially attributed the issue to a “coding error” via a post on Twitter.

Further Clarification from the Library of Congress

TechCrunch sought additional information from the Library of Congress and received a more comprehensive explanation of the situation.

Bill Ryan, the director of communications for the Library of Congress, explained that the online Constitution Annotated serves as an educational resource, linking Supreme Court rulings to the constitutional text.

“During an update to incorporate our scholars’ analysis of recent cases affecting Article I, Sections 8-10, the team unintentionally removed an XML tag,” Ryan stated to TechCrunch.

The Role of XML and Website Formatting

“This omission prevented the display of all content in Article I following the midpoint of Section 8. The issue has since been resolved, and our updated constitutional analysis is now accessible. Measures are being implemented to avoid similar incidents going forward,” Ryan added.

XML is a standard markup language utilized by the Library of Congress for website formatting. The absence of a closing tag could logically lead to missing text, as content outside the tag would be disregarded by the system.