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CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

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Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#241

Post by mratsim »

p-e-w wrote: post #212
insanitybit wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a fun exercises, try to find how many definitions of “child” there are in the US law and how many times it’s used undefined. I don't see how a language is going to solve this. This isn't really an issue of language, it's an issue with ambiguity in the very intent itself. That's why we have judges, who interpret that intent.

Indeed. Ambiguity in legal codes is a feature that allows them to remain relevant for more than a couple of years, and the formal-law "utopia" that some commenters here appear to desire would be a nightmare if put into practice.

They mean disputes go on for years, costing society a lot and enriching intermediaries.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#242

Post by wiz21c »

steego wrote: post #217
p-e-w wrote: post #211

This project seems to implicitly assume that a formally specified code of laws, where statutes can be interpreted largely mechanistically, is a good thing (and by extension, that the existing system of human interpreters with discretion and margins of error is a problem to be overcome). I don't disagree with this assumption outright, but it's certainly not obvious to me that it is correct, and the authors appear to p…

I suspect the motivation of this project is a lot more practical than what you’re projecting onto it, and I suspect you might be discounting how often law is transformed into code that runs on state IT systems. As someone who is familiar with the process of turning statutes into code, I can appreciate what this project endeavors to do, even if the value is limited to providing clarification for software developers.

It is hugely useful. I worked on implementation of law in code for 10 years and the big problem is this: there's a constant communication between software devs and law poeple. For exmaple "did you code this like that ?", "why did the system did that ?", "if I code this way, does it reflect the law precisely ?". You have to constantly trnaslate from the code base to the language of lawyers and vice versa. Doing that with regular code is no good: regular code ends up mixing law code and technical code. Making a clear separation with a dedicated language is a big plus.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#243

Post by diogenes4 »

jrm4 wrote: post #40
layer8 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software-interface contracts generally aren’t (cf. Design by Contract). The parent is correct insofar as the use of the word “contract” is not limited to contracts as defined by law.

Right, I mean, I've heard this use and I think it's kind of silly. It's like calling a hopefully-completed-circuit in some device an "electric contract" or something like that.

What's wrong with describing a hopefully-completed-circuit in some device as a contract?

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#244

Post by chromoblob »

tsimionescu wrote: post #159
pydry wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that translated certain kinds of legal contract into what was effectively a DSL. They could then be represented in a simplified way. That was the whole business. The CEO (a lawyer) claimed that the lawyers who wrote these things would deliberately and unnecesarily overcomplicate them so that they could maximize billable hours. I think they could quite easily have been templated using a DSL but…

The text of a contract can either be long and very explicit, or short but full of implicit assumptions. A DSL is the second kind: you encode those assumptions I the structure of the DSL and the text as written is based on all of those assumptions. The problem than becomes that anyone who wants to understand the contract now has to read not just the contract as written, but also all of the definition of the DSL itself…

If you can't read documents in whatever form for their legal meaning, you can't work around the need for a lawyer. The DSL may be defined in comprehensible enough language and texts in it may be interpretable easily enough; but the method of contract is determined by agreement of its parties (inside the bounds set by law).

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#245

Post by tsimionescu »

OJFord wrote: post #185
tsimionescu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how many is good enough. If it's every other person, than that's bad; if it's two people since the law was written 50 years ago, I would say that's good enough in my book. Which is it? And no, cases don't often make it to the Supreme Court because the wording of the law is ambiguous. They make it to the SC because the parties disagree on legal principles and on whether laws are unconstituional or not. >…

> And no, cases don't often make it to the Supreme Court because the wording of the law is ambiguous. They make it to the SC because the parties disagree on legal principles and on whether laws are unconstituional or not. I'm not from your legal system, and yet even I know that's not right: they make it the SC because the 'losing' party disagrees with a lower judge's decision that's already been made, and makes an ar…

Note that the SC almost by definition only looks at cases that pertain to the constitution, or to base legal principles, not to individual laws. And good luck codifying the constitution itself and/or the rules of common law into formal math.

Also, appeals essentially mean that at least one of the parties believes that a judge made a mistake in the way they applied the law, not necessarily that the law itself is ambiguous. A judge can fail to apply a perfectly unambiguous law, or at least a plaintiff can believe that they did, and can bring enough evidence that their belief has some merit.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#246

Post by dathinab »

unethical_ban wrote: post #197
dathinab wrote: post #173

programmers love to propose using "programming language" or similar for law But this fails to realize that _ambiguity (in some ways) is a fundamental important part of law_. This is because the world itself is fundamental ambiguous (in some ways)/clear cut. Naturally not all ways of ambiguity are wanted. But you can be sure that with "code as law" the ways loopholes are abused will get worse in my opinion. I would ev…

Agreed. Although I don't think this is a bad idea, I think of the idea of perfectly defined laws and perfectly enforceable laws are terrifying. If every law on the books today were able to be perfectly enforced and perfectly monitored, our lives would be utterly miserable. I'm not going to argue that's a problem with laws vs. enforcement, but either way, our society is built around ambiguity and unequal enforcement o…

I'm not speaking about perfect enforcement.

But about that law, in difference to what movies love to pretend, is not about clever word tricks and nit-picking formulations.

(In court it still can be about clever arguing, including nit picking arguments if necessary.)

But code _is_ about nit picking formulations at least if we ignore documentation, naming conventions etc. but lock solely at what the code does.

Code is meant to be precise.

Law is meant to be only as precise as necessary but no more then that. Or you could say it's meant to be as imprecise as viable.

Code is about the specific case (in general).

Law is about the generic case (in general), avoiding specific cases where possible.

Code is made for machines to consume.

Law is meant to be consumed with ambiguous defined context of the situations in (human) .

This is so deeply rooted in law that I would argue it's (in general, with exceptions) not possible to translate any current laws to code without accidentally changing their meaning in a lot of subtle but meaningful cases.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#247

Post by tsimionescu »

jeppester wrote: post #233
tsimionescu wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that no one who fails to parse long sentences would get a better understanding from replacing those with code of all things. And if the actual text of the law consisted of coding symbols, I very much expect that (a) you'd have endless debates about the precise symbols being used, and (b) have to have anchors going over the meaning of those symbols and losing 9/10ths of their audience along the way.

You are mentioning symbols as a negative in a lot of your comments, but the language posted here is mostly using words and math operators.

If a word is used with a precise formal meaning, than it is a symbol more than a word. For example, "for" in C isn't the English word "for", it is a symbol for a precisely defined operation. Someone who speaks native English couldn't understand what `for (;;){}` means.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#248

Post by ragulpr »

octacat wrote: post #91
turtleyacht wrote: post #37

It would be interesting to also "weave" in test cases. The workface of logic statements is exactly where bugs are introduced. Especially around temporal events, and that goes to formal models (and even more bugs). Typically, if there is a rule around height, there would be at least three tests¹: one taller, one equal to, and one shorter. (Without types or something, then also negative, null, and max/min boundary inpu…

It will not compile (sarcasm). Many laws are written with a lot of double meaning (recent eu regulations on allowing or not allowing russian cars is a good example). Though, it could be a good idea to find all the possible double meanings or vague definition when trying to "digitise" the laws into the programming language.

Right, some laws are just ftp-dragged & dropped to prod, understanding that it doesn't compile yet. But if legislator managed to express the _intention_ the courts will over time add and make all test cases pass.

I'm sure the mentality of a PHP developer running a successful but insane legacy site is a better model for this than a perfect OCAML project :)

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#249

Post by tsimionescu »

kmoser wrote: post #203
tsimionescu wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, to some extent, but it's still much closer to natural language than code. Expressing the law in code would turn this dial up to 11 and then some.

Sure, but there would be all manner of services that could automatically translate law-in-code to any human language you wanted. The best part is that you could easily and automatically translate a law into, say, English, Japanese, and German. Whenever the law-in-code source changes, just rerun your translator and voila: no human intervention required (meaning faster and more accurate translations of the law into hum…

But now instead of reading the laws that govern my life myself and understanding them, I have to rely on some third party to explain to me what laws my representatives are voting on.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#250

Post by tsimionescu »

from wrote: post #195
tsimionescu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite a misunderstanding of how the law actually works, probably enhanced by lots of lawyer TV emphasizing obscure wording tricks. In reality, laws are already written in a relatively normal language, and the words almost always mean exactly what they mean in plain English. The only problem is that the legal concepts they describe are themselves complex, and often they end up in a tangle of references to othe…

Then you should be able to tell us what defrauding someone of their intangible right of honest services encompasses :)

Is that supposed to be very complex legal language? I'm not sure if this is some reference I'm missing, but it sounds relatively simple to me: it seems to be an accusation that someone is providing services dis-honestly (i.e. hiding some aspect of how the service will be performed or how much it will cost).

The full scope of what that encompasses is very hard to know, as it depends on essentially every other regulation and common law practice and precedent that applies in the particular legal jurisdiction (and which jurisdiction that is can itself be a somewhat thorny issue).

But this problem isn't solvable by code. It's part of the intrinsic complexity of the legal system.

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