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GET
Compare this provision against other states

Authorizations

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Authorization
string
header
required

API key issued from the developer dashboard. Pass as Authorization: Bearer vq_key_... (preferred).

Path Parameters

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act_id
string
required

Section identifier, e.g. USC_T42_C21_S1983 (Title 42, Chapter 21, Section 1983, which a lawyer writes as 42 U.S.C. § 1983). Take it from a /us/statutes/search or /us/statutes/resolve result.

A citation also works here: 26 U.S.C. § 1, 42 USC 1983 or Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5 is resolved with the same resolver /resolve uses, and the section is served. A citation costs this endpoint's price PLUS the /resolve price (2 credits), charged as its own line whether or not it resolves, exactly as /resolve charges; that is the same total as calling /resolve and then this endpoint, in one round trip. An exact act_id costs only this endpoint's price. When a citation resolves, or when the id only matched after surrounding whitespace, quotes or a trailing period were removed, the response carries resolvedFrom saying what your input was matched as. Check it the way you would check a /resolve answer. A citation containing / cannot travel in a URL path segment; resolve it with GET /us/statutes/resolve instead.

Do not assemble an id from a citation: the title and section are derivable, but the CHAPTER is not, so USC_T26_S1 misses. A miss returns 404 with reason and, where the section exists under another id, didYouMean.

State session laws (acts as enacted, ids starting SSL_) are not code sections: read them at /us/session-laws/{sessionLawId}.

Required string length: 3 - 200
Example:

"USC_T42_C21_S1983"

Query Parameters

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limit
integer
default:5

Maximum states to return, one provision each.

Required range: 1 <= x <= 25
Example:

5

Response

The section plus comparable provisions in other states.

Response for GET /us/statutes/section/{act_id}/cross-state.

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section
StatuteResult · object
required

The section you asked about.

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neighbors
StatuteCrossStateNeighbor · object[]

Comparable provisions in other states, most similar first. At most one entry per state, so this reads as a jurisdiction comparison rather than a relevance list.

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statesCovered
integer
default:0

How many distinct states are represented. Fewer than you asked for means no provision in the remaining states cleared the similarity floor, not that those states are missing from the corpus.

Example:

5

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note
string | null

Set only when the answer is not a real zero. Cross-state comparison is defined for state statute sections; for USC, CFR and other corpora this explains that the section has no state analogues and the call is refunded.

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rankingDegraded
boolean
default:false

True when the relevance model was unavailable, so the neighbors are in retrieval order and similarity is a retrieval score on a much smaller scale rather than the usual 0-1. The provisions are still the retrieved analogues; retry shortly for the fully ranked answer.

Example:

false

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resolvedFrom
SectionIdentifierResolution · object | null

Null when the section is exactly the act_id you sent. Otherwise how your input was matched: a citation, or an act_id with transport damage (whitespace, quotes, a trailing period) removed.

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processingTimeMs
number
default:0

Server-side time for this request in milliseconds, excluding network transit. Useful for spotting a slow query; not billed on.

Example:

420.1

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creditsConsumed
number
default:0

Credits actually charged for this call. Read it rather than assuming the list price: failed and refunded work bills 0.

Example:

6

Last modified on October 9, 2026