Comment by gtsop
5 years ago
I think coding the law is not just great, but also the only way forwards. A couple of things:
- Comparing codifying law vs codifying human language/communication in general I think is very unfair. No doubt law is using the form of human written communication but it has structure and it is meant (at least in principle) to be precise. Even if there is some legislation that goes beyond that structure (honestly interested in seeing a few cases) why would we restrict ourselves from codifying all the rest of the legislation? We can have at least part of our law in an executable form, I can't see a drawback with that.
- Just for fun, let's start thinking about the intersection of law binaries and software licences, oh boy! :D
> Even if there is some legislation that goes beyond that structure (honestly interested in seeing a few cases)
It's extremely rare, approaching nonexistent, for laws to have a precise, deterministic meaning because the vast majority of human language doesn't either. Here's a good example from CodeX (Stanford Center for Legal Informatics) that assesses an extremely simple law, which contains a surprising amount of ambiguity[0]:
> "One technical problem with Computational Law, familiar to many individual with legal training, is due to the open texture of laws. Consider a municipal regulation stating "No vehicles in the park". On first blush this is fine, but it is really quite problematic. Just what constitutes a vehicle? Is a bicycle a vehicle? What about a skateboard? How about roller skates? What about a baby stroller? A horse? A repair vehicle? For that matter, what is the park? At what altitude does it end? If a helicopter hovers at 10 feet, is that a violation? What if it flies over at 100 feet?
[0] https://law.stanford.edu/2016/01/13/michael-genesereths-comp...