Get Us Statute Section Text
get_us_statute_section_textRead-only
Retrieve the full official text of a US statute, regulation, or rule section by ID. Get styled HTML and plain text to quote, draft, or analyze the actual statutory language.
Instructions
The full text of a US statute, regulation or rule section by act_id. Returns styled HTML (with cross-references and paragraph numbering as officially published) and plain text. Use when you need the actual statutory language to quote, draft against, or analyze rather than just cite.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| asOf | No | Return the section's text as it stood on this date (`YYYY-MM-DD`) instead of today's. Same cost. **This is a reconstruction, not an archive.** The corpus holds one current text per citation; an earlier one is rebuilt from the before-side of the first change we OBSERVED after your date. The `asOf` block on the response says which version you got (`source`), what it rests on (`basisChangeId`), how far back the evidence reaches (`observedFrom`), and whether the answer is bounded by when capture began rather than by the law (`isBounded`). Read `isBounded` before citing the text. A section that did not exist yet returns `available: false` with `asOf.existed: false`, which is a real answer and is charged. A section we know changed but cannot rebuild returns `source: "unavailable"` and IS refunded, because you asked for a historical text and did not get one. | |
| act_id | Yes | Section identifier, e.g. `USC_T42_C21_S1983` (Title 42, Chapter 21, Section 1983, written 42 U.S.C. 1983). Take it from a search result rather than assembling it: the title and section are derivable from a citation but the CHAPTER is not, so hand-built ids usually 404. | |
| format | No | Which representations to return. A long section carries the same text twice by default, so `plain` or `html` roughly halves the payload. Cost is unchanged: the fetch is the same either way. `content` omits `html` and `plain` entirely and returns only the split fields (`content`, `sourceCredit`, `notes`). Use it when you want the operative text and nothing else: on `17 U.S.C. § 107` that is about 1 KB instead of 30 KB over the wire, for the same price. Only United States Code sections can be split, so for any other corpus `content` returns no text at all -- check `content` for null and fall back to `plain` if you are not sure which corpus you have. | both |
| structured | No | When true, also return `markdown` and a `subsections` tree parsed from the text for pincite addressing. Same cost. |
Output Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||