Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... claims law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing" and "discretionary"/"requires or open to interpretation".

The first argument is nonsensical (computers are great at changing data: in fact way faster and more accurate than humans, having the capacity for things like single source of truth, change logs, peer consensus, and dynamic versioning while preserving historic versions automatically... and also better at publishing it, analyzing it, and documenting it).

The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy. Who cares if some laws require interpretation. Just write MAY instead of WILL (like RFC language) to make it clear the judge can decide, then provide statistical information regarding past case law. Nobody is saying "fire all the judges", they're just saying make the law clear. Right now it's not clear, and it's a big problem.

Refugee? Read up to date law in your language, automatically. Business? Determine what is required by law in order to execute a transaction. Human? Determine what you are and are not allowed to do in some field (like architecture, driving, sailing, pet walking or rock collecting) without being fined.

> The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy. Who cares if some laws require interpretation. Just write MAY instead of WILL (like RFC language) to make it clear the judge can decide, then provide statistical information regarding past case law. Nobody is saying "fire all the judges", they're just saying make the law clear. Right now it's not clear, and it's a big problem.

But that is not how law works. A judge is generally expected to interpret the law because we cannot expect someone who wrote the law to have predicted all possible things, especially those that did not even exist when the law was written.

It's (often) not close to a machine-interpretable spec, but a to visual mockup, to stay in the software area.

For example, you may have a law to forbids euthanasia. Does it also extend to assisted suicide? What if the dying person can't physically trigger their own death? What if assisted dying is illegal here, but someone takes the patient to the neighboring country?

Also, I hardly believe "read up to date law in your language" is possible, there are entire legal concepts that do not exist in different jurisdictions, or literally the same expression may mean different things ("voir dire" for example).

It's good to attempt formalizing things, but I don't think this is a strawman.

The straw man was "interpreted law is uncodifiable" - essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We can interpret where necessary without claiming that because interpretation is required in specific cases that the whole concept fails.

> law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing"

I don't think it was meant in classical terms of an SQL UPDATE. It was meant in a way that a new rule may affect the application of an existing rule. Academically speaking, it makes reasoning non-monotonic. This is exactly why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_logic is proposed.

> The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy.

I think they are trying to codify the laws in logic _without_ changes to the law.

[Edit] The journalist also failed to read up on the basics of deontic logic and defeasible reasoning: "The law says cars must drive on the left in Australia. But what if they have to cross the road to avoid hitting a child?"

Yes, in the current system it's shifting goalposts. That is a bad system.

You cannot completely successfully codify something that is based on the vagaries of wishy-washy language, nor specific legal concepts like the intent of regulations or the context of prior judgements. Therefore, improve the language: don't give up!

Imagine if latitude and longitude weren't invented because "sorta over there a few days sail beyond the cape" was too hard to quantify. This is the same ridiculous argument. It just so happens that there are also a vast number of ingratiated rent seeking and powerful people and corporations interested in the status quo: literally all of them.

I believe that as engineers and as optimists within the greater human endeavour, over time in all fields we should seek to create means of trust and means of precision: in our measurements, in our communications, in our analyses, in our references and in our collaborations.

We don't need to fire all the judges. But maybe 90% of the solicitors and standard procedural lawyers, a large part of whose job is explaining to the average citizen what exactly is the done thing in some particular area or how exactly they can expect to be treated the hands of a system that cannot otherwise explain itself.

Also, in terms of community governance if it becomes crystal clear that a law is being abused through increased fidelity in the logging of police actions brought about by such a system, then the law can more rapidly be identified and repealed.

The last century has seen a huge increase in the quantity of law that is written out explicitly in statutes [1], rather than being worked out on a case-by-case basis according to the common law method. This is an attempt to “improve the language” as you have suggested, but it has not made the law easier to comprehend. Detailed statutes make it harder for lawyers to build up a coherent picture of the entire legal system, because there’s a much greater risk that a solid argument based on general principles collapses due to a specific statute that the lawyer has never heard of.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/when-laws-become-...

Again, this points to poor scoping, an imprecise language and a broken system. According to your assertion it's currently impossible for even professionals to know what should be considered in scope. This should be the trivial basis of a legal case, not the difficult and dubious extended research result of paid professionals.

Yes, that is my assertion – it’s impossible to verify that you have considered and correctly interpreted all relevant law, although it should be rare for professionals to make a mistake, especially after extended research. I’m curious as to what makes you think this problem can be solved trivially? Formal verification is hard enough for algorithms over the integers.

Law needs to be rewritten to be efficient and transparent. Logically speaking, the first countries to do so should score major investments and trade bonuses from multinationals. If you have a tinpot dictatorship with US protection or an out of the way novelty country with few useful industries, you could do worse than throw down on this project.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com