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CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

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Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#41

Post by jrm4 »

giltho wrote: post #19
jrm4 wrote: post #9

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 thing…

I can assure you that the person who wrote this is very well aware of the subtleties involved with formalising the law. Law + Programming is an active research field ( https://popl23.sigplan.org/home/prolala-2023 ), and it is very far away from anything like smart contracts, it is full of brilliant people who have no pretension of replacing the law with computers, but simply be helpers where they can.

Sure, I think I posted my response not because "it could never solve ANY problems," but instead "way too many non-lawyers, especially techy-non-lawyers, have the deeply misplaced idea that is a very important, perhaps THE most important, problem to solve in the law." It's just not very high on the list at all.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#42

Post by 0thgen »

version_five wrote: post #11

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 bey…

I suppose a formalized legal language could:

- help in quickly testing whether newly drafted laws contradict existing laws(without needing to memorize the existing legal code)

- check for redundancies

- checking whether removing one law affects any others

- statistically analyze legal systems in different countries

Assuming any of those are important issues in law. I'm not sure

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#43

Post by jrm4 »

kstrauser wrote: post #30

I think what I'd rather see is a standardize test suite format for laws that spells out the intentions. Once I lived in a state that proposed a very simple anti-child porn law with good intent, but it was too simple. It read sort of like "anyone sending explicit pictures of minors from a cell phone will be guilty of conveying child porn". It was written in the proper legal jargon, but wasn't a whole lot more detailed…

I partly like this idea in theory, but believe it is literally 100% impossible to come up with a better "test suite" than "the actual court system?"

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#44

Post by codesnik »

kstrauser wrote: post #30

I think what I'd rather see is a standardize test suite format for laws that spells out the intentions. Once I lived in a state that proposed a very simple anti-child porn law with good intent, but it was too simple. It read sort of like "anyone sending explicit pictures of minors from a cell phone will be guilty of conveying child porn". It was written in the proper legal jargon, but wasn't a whole lot more detailed…

law tests would be good, though they probably have to be "evaled" via the same mechanism which would apply them. Meaning, courts :\

I personally would be happy if any country would attach rationale for the law to the law itself. And possibly some KPI to see if it works. So the law could be reevaluated later, to see if it works at all, or maybe counterproductive, or maybe some major actual application of the law is not why it was introduced.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#45

Post by 0thgen »

hedora wrote: post #38
jrm4 wrote: post #9

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 thing…

I like to turn this argument around to see how absurd it is. Why not just take the existing law, and have a machine execute it in the style of a computer program? We wouldn’t need judges juries or lawyers. You’d just type the specifics of your case and any supporting documents/evidence into the computer and a verdict would pop out. Of course, the system could be used for other stuff too, like checking building code c…

Some people have argued that the fuzziness of the legal system can be a good feature for some reason, but you could always have a machine execute the law and a human make the final call. So you wouldn't need judges, juries, or lawyers, but you would need a team of legal shamans that sign off on verdicts

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#46

Post by andrewaylett »

jrm4 wrote: post #9

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 thing…

This is a problem, but not one that Catala suffers from on a first reading.

Some elements of law are amenable to translation into source code, and indeed anyone working in fintech will probably have done that at some point. If the law gives a threshold for a tax allowance, for example, you need to encode that requirement in accordance with the law. Being able to mark up the text of each regulation should make it much easier to be confident you've not missed anything.

Trying to write non-financial regulation as code is pretty much doomed to failure. But to the extent that tax or benefits regulations set out numbers that we have to translate into code anyway, it's good to have that code be verifiable against the specific regulatory text.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#47

Post by Rochus »

jrm4 wrote: post #9

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 thing…

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

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." (Twain?)

Hasn't Cyc impressively demonstrated just how incredibly difficult and costly it is to formalize even the most basic matters of daily life?

There already was a discussion two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059899

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#48

Post by hedora »

0thgen wrote: post #45
hedora wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to turn this argument around to see how absurd it is. Why not just take the existing law, and have a machine execute it in the style of a computer program? We wouldn’t need judges juries or lawyers. You’d just type the specifics of your case and any supporting documents/evidence into the computer and a verdict would pop out. Of course, the system could be used for other stuff too, like checking building code c…

Some people have argued that the fuzziness of the legal system can be a good feature for some reason, but you could always have a machine execute the law and a human make the final call. So you wouldn't need judges, juries, or lawyers, but you would need a team of legal shamans that sign off on verdicts

The problem isn’t checking the computer’s output.

It is that the law would need to encode all the stuff I said, so it would need to be nuanced enough to replace all engineering, leadership and administration roles. (And also anything involving ethics.)

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#49

Post by lemper »

jrm4 wrote: post #9

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 thing…

how many times have you fought in court to argue about "the spirit of the law"? I, for one, don't really care about this lang or "law is computer code" thing. just wanted to know lawyers life, I guess.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#50

Post by sfvisser »

jrm4 wrote: post #41
giltho wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that the person who wrote this is very well aware of the subtleties involved with formalising the law. Law + Programming is an active research field ( https://popl23.sigplan.org/home/prolala-2023 ), and it is very far away from anything like smart contracts, it is full of brilliant people who have no pretension of replacing the law with computers, but simply be helpers where they can.

Sure, I think I posted my response not because "it could never solve ANY problems," but instead "way too many non-lawyers, especially techy-non-lawyers, have the deeply misplaced idea that is a very important, perhaps THE most important, problem to solve in the law." It's just not very high on the list at all.

> It's just not very high on the list at all.

Maybe not for lawyers, no. But as a citizen I'm expected to comply with the law, with many many laws. It'd actually be nice if law was slightly more formally verifiable, so it would be easier for me to understand what to comply with.

Being able to break down clauses into more logical normal forms would probably greatly enhance the possibility of compliance.

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