Info / Point-in-time history

Point-in-time history

Read a federal Act as it stood on an earlier date, and understand the limits.

Hyperlaw mirrors point-in-time snapshots for federal legislation where the publisher exposes them. A history page turns those snapshots into a date-addressable view: the Act as it read on a chosen day, with the differences from the previous version marked.

Opening the history view

On a federal instrument page, Historical versions in the header opens /history/{code}. The page lists the mirrored dates and the amendment timeline, and a date picker jumps to any date in the covered range.

Reading a past version

A dated URL such as /history/C-46/2015-06-01 renders the Act as it stood on that date. The page marks provisions that began or ended on that date, shows the full text of a changed provision, and links to the earlier and later versions. The Changed markers and the diff view are computed from the stored node versions, not inferred from the current text.

Provision-level history is available at /history/{code}/s.{path}. It lists every mirrored version of that provision with its start and end dates and its text, so you can compare a subsection across amendments without loading the whole Act.

When history is unavailable

Coverage is partial and varies by Act. The history page states the covered range and the number of snapshots. If a date has no snapshot, the page explains why: point-in-time text for federal Acts begins in 2003 (2006 for some instruments), the snapshot was not mirrored, the date is outside coverage, or the provision was not in force. It never fabricates a historical text.

Citations in judgments follow the same rule. A citation to a period that is not mirrored renders as an amber link to the current text, with the Not the historical text warning in its hover card. The warning's amendment tier is based on the publisher's amendment year, which is a citation year, not an in-force date.