In happy blog news, Bob Mercer reports that the Legislative Research Council and the State Library are working on putting more of the Legislature’s historic documents online:
The South Dakota Code Commission wants to meet with folks from the State Library in the coming months to talk about getting even more of the Legislature’s history onto the internet.
Wenzel Cummings, the new code counsel, said library officials want to see what the Legislature wants next.
…The commission decided back in 2016 that legislative records should be added to the library’s plan to electronically copy other state records.
So far, that’s meant digitally archiving every law the Legislature has passed every session, starting with 1890 [Bob Mercer, “Dating Back to Statehood, S.D. Officials Want the World to See How the Legislature Works,” KELO-TV, 2019.09.14].
Until now, if I’ve wanted to research the history of a particular statute on the Legislature’s website, I’ve had to stop at 1997, the earliest year for which LRC posts Session Laws, the special volumes showing every law passed each Session.
But now there’s a link at the bottom of that page: “State Archives: Session Laws of South Dakota, beginning with 1890 to the present.” Hubba-hubba/clicka-clicka!
Such historical research is exactly how the State Library justified digitization Legislative documents in its 2016 memo to the Code Commission:
The state library collection of SDCL books begins with a volume from 1877. The SDCL that is accessible from the Legislative Research Council website only contains current South Dakota law. Researchers who are trying to track changes in a law over several years have to contact the SD State Library, SD State Archives, or LRC to find this information in their paper collections. Digitizing this collection and making it available online would be a great asset for researchers, SD citizens, those who practice law, and others across the U.S. and world [SD State Library, memo to Code Commission, 2016.06.22].
And now, thanks to this digitization, I can learn that in 1903, the Legislature passed Session Law 9/Senate Bill 220, “An Act for the More Effectual Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” which authorized humane societies to badge and arm members and agents “to lawfully interfere to prevent the perpetration of any act of cruelty upon any dumb animal, and may use such force as may be necessary to prevent the same, and to that end may summon to their aid any bystander….” Such anti-cruelty societies could law down this law on “any perso, who causes, procures, authorizes, requests or encourages, or personally overdrives, overloads, drives when overloaded, overworks, tortures, torments, deprives of necessary sustenance, drin or shelter, cruelly beats, mutilates, or cruelly kills, any animal, an whoever having the charge or custody of any animal, either as owner or otherwise, willfully or negligently, subjects the same to needless suffering, or inflicts unnecessary cruelty upon the same by docking its tail, or in any manner abuses any animal, or rides, drives or otherwise uses any galled, lame or disabled animal, or with yoke or harness that chafes or galls it, or check-rein or any part of its harness too tight for its comfort, or drives, rides or works any animal when it has been six consecutive hours without food….” 1903 SB 220 also required owners to kill any animal that was “injured or diseased past recovery” within twelve hours of notification by any peace officer or agent or officer of a humane society.
I have no idea what international cabal foisted that animal-rights legislation on our state, but we banned animal cruelty 116 years ago, and agriculture, hunting, and trapping somehow persisted.
Feel free to spend your Sunday persuing the historical archives of South Dakota Session Laws and see what Legislative gems you can find!
Cory,
This news is very helpful, thank you.
I recommend the earlier records of Dakota Territory, too, be digitized.
Last year I stopped by the State Archives in Pierre, and then went to Bismarck, to research some of the old records of the Territorial legislative sessions.
These records include interesting history regarding the fights for county seats, and the creation of Dakota Territory state colleges.
Interesting, too, was the proposed legislation in 1885 (Sixteenth Dakota Territorial Legislature) for women’s suffrage, which passed both the House and the Territorial Council, but was vetoed by the Governor.
Talk about two dysfunctional outfits of the government pairing up. I, for one, cannot imagine a worse Frankenstein baby than when the librarians are taken over by the council of the legislatures and poop out a collective turd.
Can you help me lobby SD LRC to publish a downloadable, dynamic XML containing SD codified law?
If I had 40 hours with their database, I could produce it myself.
Why download it, John, especially when you have to update it every year? Why not let the cloud do the work for you?
Cory – By “the cloud” do you mean the state’s website?
I would like to have the entire thing in a single normalized file that I can re-download when it is updated .. I write a lot of software code, and find the state’s site very difficult.
Also, I’m not always online ..
Make sense?
Sure, I’ve thought about some coding that would allow for searching and processing roll call vote data, and having a nice local copy of that data could be useful for that purpose. But I figure if I’m not online, I’m not getting any government-watchdog work done, anyway.