The U.S. Library of Congress shared an explanation as to what caused sections of the Constitution to go missing recently.
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According to TechCrunch, large parts of Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution were removed while Section 9, which limits congressional power as well as the Writ of Habeas Corpus, and Section 10, which states which powers are denied to the states, were deleted entirely.
The Wayback Machine archive indicated that the changes were made within the past few weeks. It was noted that the Library of Congress’ website displayed the complete text on July 17.
After the word started circulating about the online Constitution situation, the Library of Congress issued a statement regarding the incident.
“It has been brought ot our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated website,” the post reads. “We’ve learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon.”
Hours later, the Library of Congress revealed in an update, “Missing sections of the Constitution Annoted website have been restored. Upkeep of the Constitution, Annotated and other digital resources is a critical part of the Library’s mission, and we appreciate the feedback that alerted us to the error and allowed us to fix it.”
The glitch occurred just months after senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller suggested suspending habeas corpus to support the current administration’s immigration policy. He also stated the suspension was an option that Trump’s officials were “actively looking at.”
The Library of Congress Director Reveals More Details About the Online Constitution’s ‘Coding Error’
In a statement to TechCrunch, Bill Ryan, the director of communications for the Library of Congress, revealed more details about the online U.S. Constitution coding error.
“The online Constitution Annotated is an education tool which includes discussion of the Supreme Court’s latest opinions linked ot the text of the Constitution,” he explained. “When updating the site to reflect our constitutional scholars’ analysis of the impact of the latest cases on Article 1, Sections 8-10, the team inadvertently removed an XML tag.”
He then noted, “This prevented publication of everything in Article 1 after the middle of Section 8. The problem has been corrected, and our updated constitutional analysis is now available. We are taking steps to prevent a recurrence in the future.”
TechCrunch further reported XML is a commonly used markup language used by the Library of Congress to format its website.
Although the reason behind the glitch seems logical, some people are still skeptical. U.S. Representative Mark Takano sent a letter to Acting Librarian of Congress, Robert Newlen, demanding answers.
“Seeing the Library of Congress erase whole sections of the Constitution was deeply alarming,” Takano shared. “Trump and his allies have mused about suspending Habeas Corpus, which made the deletion of this, and other articles in the Constitution even more distressing.”
He then added, “The public deserves answers on how this happened, and I intend to get them.”
The letter included questions that Newlen was asked to answer.