What problem does this solve? It appears to add precision where it's mostly already clear - perhaps it can enforce some kind of rigor... but then like the example given uses "fair market value" as a term which I'd expect to be the kind of thing that's in contention, rather than any of the actual "logic", and it doesn't help with that.
The reason we have courts and lawyers is because of the need for interpretation beyond just writing good logic, so I don't see how this can really do anything. Or is it for something else?
Catala still produces plaintext legal documents at the end of the day but can be seen as a markup language for those documents. But because that markup language is a whole lot more precise than the legal text itself, it can be a bit more versatile.
Examples of how this could be useful:
- Reducing the overhead for maintaining a list of semantic translations of that legal code into other languages. Of course the official language is the only one that is "legal" but the other translations should be close enough to effectively express the nuance provided the language outputs are maintained by people who can actually speak those languages.
- Producing machine executable proof or simulation code. This could be used for "fuzzing" the legal code to identify loopholes or unintended outcomes so that legislators can then propose improved terms to avoid those issues. This is by no means "making code law" but it provides an additional tool for understanding the law and how the many different parts of the legal code interact with each other.
- Adding on to the previous example, sim code could be integrated into complex models for simulating the impact of legal changes on the economy at large or specific segments.
- Finance related code can be used to generate a tool or API for validating tax, accounting, and compliance documents (as a first pass to catch errors early and reduce overhead) as well as to even prepare some of those documents. These tools often already exist but they are one or more steps removed from the actual legal definition which increases the risk of error as well as the overhead of maintaining them (which can potentially encourage rent seeking behavior by commercial providers of these tools).
France actually is already doing this to a reasonable degree albeit the "codified" version is based on the law rather than the codified version producing plaintext law. The DGFiP [1] maintains a gitlab organisation [2] that includes both Catala and MLang [3] representations of different parts of the french legal code for exactly these purposes.
According to the example in the readme, it's specially for text law that produce codes… So it should be a road to some literal programming or implementation proven.
Example of text law that should/may become code somewhere: the senate vote to give pension to veterans that meet some criteria… But there already exist less known rules for some cases and they may be incompatible.
I think that coupled with some kind of prolog, it may help detecting inconsistencies early.
> Of course the official language is the only one that is "legal"
If only! Here in Canada there are two official languages. All laws are drafted, and enacted, in both English and French. Both versions are equally valid, equally binding. And, sometimes, they don't say the same thing.
Catholic Canon Law is drafted and coded in Latin, which is supposedly the only official and binding version. However, this is translated into hundreds of vernaculars! People often read it in their native language for convenience, even lawyers, but this can be fraught with peril.
Yeah that's common in a number of other countries as well. I should have probably said "the official languages are the only ones that are legal" instead. In which case a tool like this could be useful for helping maintain that equivalence.
>It appears to add precision where it's mostly already clear - perhaps it can enforce some kind of rigor...
I'd argue that the imprecision of law is more feature than bug. Rules as written have edge cases and, as long as the law is written in natural language, you can get a feel for their intent and that helps Judges decide what to do in those situations.
The reason we have courts and lawyers is because of the need for interpretation beyond just writing good logic, so I don't see how this can really do anything. Or is it for something else?