A more user-friendly way to read and understand Florida's complicated law books just launched online.
SunshineStatutes.com has features that the state's official website, Online Sunshine at leg.state.fl.us, does not. For example, there is an easy-to-understand description of each law's history and hyperlinked text that shows the definitions of terms in other parts of the law.
Florida's Statutes cover 951 chapters separated into 48 "titles."
Eventually, the Sunshine Statutes website will allow people to trace laws back to bills and court cases that reference them. One day, it could even be possible to link a law back to the lobbyist who supported the issue.
"The idea is to make the statutes more accessible to the citizens and to make it more meaningful and understandable," said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. Her organization worked with the Florida Society of News Editors to assist in the site's development.
Florida is the second state to have its law books simplified by Waldo Jaquith, who first worked on Virginia's.
Read more here.
Well ... it looks nice but doesn't really add anything to folks' knowledge beyond what the official statutes on-line has.
In some cases it doesn't even report the complete information (see 849.161, for example). Granted that is an odd case with two separate laws amending the same section in the same year. But the state site is more reliable.
Funny how much money some folks will pay for some techno=dude to do a simple on-line copy and make-over.
More show than substance here--but that's the typical fare we get from the press.
Posted by: whasup | July 07, 2012 at 02:22 AM
Agreed. The site isn't any more user friendly at all.
Posted by: CP | July 11, 2012 at 04:54 PM