CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

It is named after a French guy called Pierre Catala, not the language. Probably the name comes from the language but according to the documentation does not seem to be with acute accent.

> The language is named after Pierre Catala, a professor of law who pionneered the French legaltech by creating a computer database of law cases, Juris-Data. The research group that he led in the late 1960s, the Centre d’études et de traitement de l’information juridique (CETIJ), has also influenced the creation by state conselor Lucien Mehl of the Centre de recherches et développement en informatique juridique (CENIJ), which eventually transformed into the entity managing the LegiFrance website, acting as the public service of legislative documentation.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#5

Post by Supply5411 » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

Very cool. Pessimistically, I think that having a clear, understandable view of legal text so that people can navigate the law safely is against a lot of entrenched interests.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#6

Post by cphoover » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

This is interesting, and not to criticize, but I wonder if transformer model's accuracy in interpreting law will obviate the need for something like this.

It would be interesting to train Large Language Transformer Models to generate this code for you based on the text in the laws. This way you have a deterministic testable output, without risk of hallucinations.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#7

Post by racked » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

melenaboija wrote: post #4

plumeria wrote: post #3

The Catalan language name is written Català.

It is named after a French guy called Pierre Catala, not the language. Probably the name comes from the language but according to the documentation does not seem to be with acute accent. > The language is named after Pierre Catala, a professor of law who pionneered the French legaltech by creating a computer database of law cases, Juris-Data. The research group that he led in the late 1960s, the Centre d’études et de…

The commenter was maybe pointing out a naming conflict.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#8

Post by 0xDEF » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

cphoover wrote: post #6

This is interesting, and not to criticize, but I wonder if transformer model's accuracy in interpreting law will obviate the need for something like this. It would be interesting to train Large Language Transformer Models to generate this code for you based on the text in the laws. This way you have a deterministic testable output, without risk of hallucinations.

Even LLMs would be better off with a clear unambiguous syntax to define human laws and rules.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#9

Post by jrm4 » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

Lawyer here.

Oh, this again. I suppose this looks relatively harmless, but I'm always wary of "law is like computer code."

The impulse to think this can strongly solve any real problem in the law is intuitively attractive, but I strongly predict this mostly never happens; it's the law's job to be intensely practical in the face of hard-edged "computer-like" rules.

If anything, you get goofy confusion about what things "are?" My go-to on this is always the "smart contract" -- which can be useful little bits of automated robot money moving code, but emphatically are neither "smart" nor "contracts."

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#10

Post by tgv » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

Supply5411 wrote: post #5

Very cool. Pessimistically, I think that having a clear, understandable view of legal text so that people can navigate the law safely is against a lot of entrenched interests.

I don't think it's that. It's hard to write legal texts, and sometimes it's better to be vague, so the courts have some freedom when establishing jurisprudence.

Treaties can be written with vague wording to allow parties to sign it, even if there isn't 100% agreement. That's an old practice.