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Comment by MichaelDickens | Hacker News Reader

IANAL but from my experience reading laws, they're written in a way that looks like it's trying to replicate programming-language-esque nested logic, but in prose format—instead of using physical layout to establish the relationships between concepts, they use words, which I find more confusing. I would rather read laws written in a more structured format.

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You (as a software engineer or similar) have been trained to read the 'more structured format' you'd prefer; lawyers have been trained to read 'prose'.

Don't get me wrong I'd prefer it too, I just recognise it's a consequence of my own education and experience, and if we somehow flipped the switch overnight most lawyers would be completely baffled and pining for the much clearer old way.

The US Code is divided into numbered titles, sections, paragraphs and subparagraphs which can link to and incorporate each other by reference. This tree structure is reflected in typographic conventions which visually distinguish operative provisions from headings, indices and editorial notes. Isn't this the same kind of "structured format" as a code repository made up of libraries, modules, source files and functions?

If you read almost any state or federal statute, it's usually presented online in a tree format where definitions link to the defining article and referenced articles are hyperlinks to those sections.

It's all very readable.

But all structured format use words, and they're many programming language that are prose since COBOL. No one want to write laws in APL or assembly like.

Catala has similar goal than OpenEdge ABL[1] which is prose also.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEdge_Advanced_Business_Lan...

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