Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 301 posts

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#11

Post by version_five »

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?

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#12

Post by sixo »

tgv wrote: post #10
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.

It is probably better to be intentionally and clearly unclear when you want to be, and clearly algorithmic when you want that, than just stir it all together in the name of judicial discretion.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#13

Post by Guvante »

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 the example given increases legibility.

Programming tends to use less understandable but more precise verbiage in general.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#15

Post by diogenes4 »

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…

> 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."

They are contracts—just not legal contracts. One of many types of contracts in the world that are not legal constructs.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#16

Post by lo_zamoyski »

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.

That's far too reductive. The law is abstract, and still needs to be interpreted and prudentially applied to specific situations, and you cannot capture all of that in the law a priori. Furthermore, having a computer crunch through a bunch of predicates is easy compared to getting the facts expressed in a form that is crunchable. So for specific and narrow applications where such representations are not costly to produce or already exist, such an application of computational law is feasible. But broadly? No.

And then there's the distinction between lex and ius that I think needs to be considered in this context.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#18

Post by Angostura »

diogenes4 wrote: post #15
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…

> 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." They are contracts—just not legal contracts. One of many types of contracts in the world that are not legal constructs.

Most contracts are intended to be enforceable by law, as far as I know. Which kind of non-enforceable contracts did you have in mind?

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#19

Post by giltho »

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.

Re: CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specification

#20

Post by [deleted] »

racked wrote: post #7
melenaboija wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN