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Copyright and quotation
This site indexes and cites. It does not republish the documents it indexes.
These papers are not copied here. Only small parts are quoted.
Laws and orders from the government belong to everyone. They are quoted freely.
One book here is owned by The Heritage Foundation. Each quote from it names the page and links to their own copy.
The documents
Most of what is indexed here is federal law, and federal law belongs to everyone. The public laws of the 119th Congress, the bill texts, and the executive orders are works of the United States government, carry no copyright, and are quoted and linked freely. Of the 117 documents indexed, 116 are in that class.
One is not. Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is © 2023 The Heritage Foundation, all rights reserved. It belongs to its publisher and is not licensed to this site. It is quoted for reference and commentary, and every quotation links to the publisher's own freely available copy so a reader can check it in context. The limits below exist for that book.
How Much Is Quoted, and Why It Is Measured
The site quotes the sentence that carries a proposal, not the passage around it, and never the whole of a chapter or section. Because the risk of over-quoting accumulates across a work rather than appearing on any one page, the proportion is measured before every build and publishing stops if it drifts: no excerpt over 90 words, no chapter more than five quoted, no more than 5% of a work in total. Those limits apply to a work under copyright. A statute passed by Congress is a work of the United States government and carries no copyright, so there is nothing there to ration, and the proportion is measured and published for it anyway. The current figures are published on the methodology page.
This Site's Own Material
The summaries, plain English versions, match notes and the software that builds the site are the work of this site. Quotations from the documents are not, and remain their publishers' property.
Rights Inquiries
If you hold rights in a document indexed here and believe a quotation exceeds what reference and commentary require, write to contact@readthemandate.org naming the page and the passage. Excerpt length is a dial this site is willing to turn down; the page citation and the link to your copy are what actually matter to a reader.