A comprehensive dataset of U.S. federal laws (1789–2022)

U.S. federal laws figure importantly in many research projects in political science, law, sociology, economics, and other disciplines. Despite their prominence, there is no authoritative, current, and comprehensive dataset of U.S. federal laws. In part, this is because such laws have been enacted over hundreds of years, resulting in a complicated patchwork of documents published in numerous and inconsistent formats. As a simplification, many scholars have relied upon selective lists of major legislative enactments or complete lists of relatively recent enactments. Here, I report on an effort to transparently and reproducibly assemble a complete database of US laws and their revision histories by combining data from HeinOnline, the Governmental Printing Office, and the National Archives and Records Administration. The result is a database of 49,746 laws spanning 1789 to 2022.