The Library of Congress has provided a more detailed explanation for why large sections of the U.S. Constitution suddenly disappeared from its official website.
As previously reported, parts of Section 8, along with the entirety of Sections 9 and 10, were removed from Article 1 of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s website over the past month. These sections cover Congressional powers, the rights of individual states, and due process rights. The disappearance raised concerns, particularly amid reports that the Trump administration had threatened to suspend habeas corpus.
After the issue was reported, the Library of Congress stated on social media that the missing sections were the result of a “coding error.” Further clarification came from Bill Ryan, the Library of Congress’s director of communications, who explained that the online Constitution Annotated is an educational resource that links Supreme Court opinions to relevant constitutional text. During an update to reflect recent case analyses, the team accidentally removed an XML tag, which caused everything in Article I after the middle of Section 8 to be omitted.
Ryan confirmed that the issue has been resolved, and the updated constitutional analysis is now available. The Library of Congress is also implementing measures to prevent similar errors in the future. XML, a widely used markup language, structures the website’s content, and a missing closing tag can cause text to be excluded from display.
The full text of the Constitution has since been restored on the Library of Congress’s website.