A Quantitative Analysis of the Bangladesh Legislative Corpus
1,652 statutory instruments scraped from bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd, classified by topic, era and status. Thirteen analyses covering citation networks, survival curves, topic grouping, repeal dynamics, cross-lingual tropes, and a full cross-reference network.
Topic-Based Grouping
Topic Overview
Volume & repeal rate in one view
Left: each row = a topic, bar = active (blue) + repealed (red). Right: dot = repeal rate %; green <10%, amber 10–25%, red >25%. Dotted line = corpus average (19.4%). Read left-to-right: big + red-dot = large AND volatile.
Repeal Rate by Topic
Which policy domains shed the most laws · click a bar to see the laws inside
Constitutional & Governance leads — each regime change sweeps out the previous governance framework. Finance & Tax is the most stable large domain. Click any bar to see the full list of laws in that topic.
Topic × Era Heatmap
Where repeal pressure was concentrated
Each cell = % of laws in that topic-era pair that have been repealed. Dark = high pressure. Pakistan Period × Constitutional & Governance is the darkest cell.
Repeal Deep-Dive
Annual Enactments & Repeals
Law-making and law-unmaking across 227 years
Blue bars = all laws enacted that year. Red = those now repealed. Gold dashes mark the four constitutional turning-points.
Repeal by Instrument Type
Ordinances vs Acts vs President's Orders
Ordinances are executive shortcuts — they are repealed at the highest rate. Parliamentary Acts are the most durable form.
Structural Analyses
Citation Network
Which statutes the rest of the corpus depends on
Cross-references counted from operative law text only (editorial footnotes excluded). The Bangladesh Laws (Revision & Declaration) Act 1973 leads with 407 citations — it's the law that adapted all colonial-era statute to Bangladesh.
Survival Curves
Kaplan–Meier probability of remaining active
Ordinances drop sharply in the first 10 years. By year 20 an Ordinance has ~52% survival vs ~87% for a Parliamentary Act.
Linguistic Complexity over Time
4 metrics across all 1,526 laws (English + Bengali) — decade-averaged trendlines
Each panel covers the full corpus including 235 Bengali-primary laws (gold dots). Sentence length: broadly flat at 35–45 words, dipping toward modern drafting. Proviso density: peaks 1930–50. Obligation ratio: rose from 0.5 to 0.7 post-1970, meaning modern laws are more prescriptive. Definition density: climbed through the colonial period to a peak in 1960, then fell.
Drafting Language
When did Bangla overtake English?
English dominated until the 1980s. The 1987 Bangla Language Enforcement Act triggered a transition visible in the corpus around 1989–1992.
Cross-Lingual Trope Analysis
Trope Prevalence
Most common legal formulas (★ = Bangla)
Five templates appear in 600+ laws each: gazette notification, 'deemed to be', appeal, notwithstanding, power to make rules. These are the structural glue of Bangladeshi law.
Trope Trajectories
Rise, plateau and decline of key formulas
The notwithstanding clause peaked in the 1970s; its Bangla twin only emerged in the 1990s. 'East Pakistan' peaks at 1960 with near-zero new appearances post-1975.
Bilingual Bridge
EN formula vs its Bangla equivalent
Gazette and Tribunal are near-parity. Limitation (তামাদি) and corporate offence remain almost entirely English even in Bangla-drafted laws.
Cross-Reference Network
Cross-Reference Network
Which laws are cited by everything else
Node size = times cited (from operative text only — editorial footnotes excluded). The Bangladesh Laws (Revision & Declaration) Act 1973 leads with 407 citations; the Irrigation Act 1876 is second. Colour = topic domain. Hover over any node for year, citation count, topic, and status.