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The entire US Code is now online in XML

uscodebeta.house.gov

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Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#211

Post by jacques_chester »

smsm42 wrote: post #208
jacques_chester wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, only someone who hasn't studied law could say this. Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. Unlike lawyers, we can simply will some of that away. We can make an enum which smooshes together disparate phenomena, that feeds a dropdown list and require the customers to use it. We can ignore very rare corner cases and include a comments field.…

That's one of the reasons I am a libertarian. Less government means less complex law means less bugs and abuses of the law. If your government tries to say what you can or can not eat, for example, you need complex law to figure out what is cheese and how big the holes in it must be. If you can eat whatever you like and the government couldn't care less, you do not need any of that. So tell me - do we really need a l…

There's a difference between legislation/regulation and case law. Hayek is particularly good to read on the distinction.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#212

Post by joesb »

skriticos2 wrote: post #205
dragonwriter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, we should have black and white laws, and unit tests for them. First problem: I don't think that can be done. I'd be a lot more convinced to consider arguments like this accompanied by completed samples in some real area of human endeavor of the "black and white laws" with accompanying "unit tests" (and, anyway, wouldn't we want automated user acceptance tests, not unit tests.)

Thinking about it, it probably can be done.. just not in a free society (which I think is all about doing what you want as long as you don't hurt others in the process). You probably can create black and white laws in a despotic rule. "The Ruler has all right, you have none. He decides." There, drafted an entire legislature with very black and white rules..

Then who decides if you have broken the law? Obviously cops have no right either. Only the ruler can decides? So ruler spent every seconds telling people whether they can talk/walk/eat?

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#213

Post by rmc »

jacques_chester wrote: post #180
liscovich wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but what would it look like in the future? Would you just fork a repo?

You just say that the laws in force on a particular date apply locally, minus anything that physically can't apply (eg laws about particular locations). The law of every country in the English-speaking world started that way. Australia's current system of law, for example, commenced as a branch of British law on 26 January 1788. All the laws in force in Britain at that moment were presumed to apply; laws governing in…

You just say that the laws in force on a particular date apply locally, minus anything that physically can't apply (eg laws about particular locations).

Yep. Or you give yourself a new constitution and say "All laws previously in force automatically come into force, unless they contradict the new constitution". Ireland did that.

Likewise Ireland cleared out a lot of old laws in the 200X's. It was done by saying "Anything pre-1922 is repealed unless it's on this list".

I'm unsure why they kept some laws, like the 1204 law on "Erection of castle and fortifications at Dublin; establishment of fairs at Donnybrook,Waterford and Limerick", but at least now we can refer to it as the Fairs Act of 1204....

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#214

Post by rmc »

minor_nitwit wrote: post #144
rmc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's impossible with the current English language, and the fact that human beings disagree about lots of things.

you wouldn't write in English, you'd write it in Lisp.

But then you either need to get people to talk in Lisp or some other logical language, or you need a way to translate it to English. It's the English translation where ambiguities will arise. You've just moved the problem around,

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#215

Post by rmc »

minor_nitwit wrote: post #161
liscovich wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any examples of actual legal documents written in Lisp, or some other formal language?

haha, no. It was meant as a quasi-joke. I'd like to see one though. Certain laws are very cut-and-dry (speeding for instance) and perhaps laws could be proven on a functional basis. You could even make it axiomatic from the constitution and declaration of independence. Of course, you'd need to define the axiomatic meaning of things like 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed' - which is…

Certain laws are very cut-and-dry (speeding for instance)

Ha! No.

* do you want to give an exemption for speeding for, say, ambulances? So how do you define "ambulance"? Do you have to be registered to drive an ambulance? What defines the "duty of an ambulance" (or are they allowed to speed no matter what). What about a van carrying an organ to be donated?

* What if I have my sick child in the car and I'm rushing them to the hospital because it's faster than waiting for an ambulance? Is it right that I can be arrested and convicted for that? I think that would be a perversion of the spirit of any just law.

* What if I'm being chased by a maniac relative who wants to kill me? Can I speed then to drive away from them? Do I have to believe my life is in danger? How do you define that?

* Let's pretend I'm driving along and some other vehicle is about to move into my lane and crash into me because they are stupid and don't see me, and let's pretend that if I speed up a little bit (over the speed limit) and am able to get in front of them and avoid an accident. Should I be convictable for speeding even though I sped to prevent an accident?

Sure, these are all edge cases and there are loads of cases where it is clear cut, but you have to write a law that can handle the edge cases. Without accepting the vagueness of human life, you'll wind up with an unfair conviction that is horrible.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#216

Post by joesb »

skriticos2 wrote: post #204
nathan_long wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends how you define "simpler." There would be a LOT of incredibly specific definitions, since there would be no room for interpretation by a judge. Consider a law that says "you can't drive a vehicle without a license." Is a bicycle a vehicle? What if it has a motor and weighs a lot? A velomobile? What about a hovercar? There might be 2,000 laws referencing "vehicle [definition #4,849, version 5]". (Actually, I gu…

.. it depends. What if the point in the given situation is to avoid traffic congestion? You normally don't want (a small) buggy drive down a high speed highway. In that case it the point would be: "should match the traffic flow requirements". So, I agree with your argument. It's all very situation dependent. For some reason I find it oddly comforting that human society and life in general can't be crammed into a smal…

> In that case it the point would be: "should match the traffic flow requirements".

And that's simple? What's the requirements? Might as well just say "people should be good", and say that's simple law.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#217

Post by hk__2 »

vog wrote: post #139

I find it amusing that here in Germany, we have that for years: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ All laws are available in XML, HTML, PDF, etc. The site also provides an RSS feed. In addition, some enthusiasts regularily download stuff from there and apply those to a Git repository: https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze That way, this repository contains not only the current laws, but also the history of how the law…

In France, all is on the Web, but you’re not allowed to crawl it unless you pay :/

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#218

Post by shabble »

jacques_chester wrote: post #197
genwin wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. True, yet I'm convinced by obvious ambiguity that it's on purpose, to feed the legal industry. That conviction is bolstered by all the "work" Congress does on reviving sunset clauses on laws that had no good reason to sunset.

Again, I must insist that folk can only take this view because they have not studied law. Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. The complexity of law is emergent from the problem domain. It doesn't require a conspiracy against the public to be that way. It merely requires the existence of a sufficiently large and diverse pu…

> Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler.

Although it seems like there is also the accretion of "legalistic debt" (c.f. technical debt) when changes are made in response to (the perception of) urgent, high-profile problems.

It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existing laws than it is to write a new, much simpler version that would cover all the same ground, get it passed, and repeal the older version.

I'm also curious about what effect changes to a particular law have on precedent based on an interpretation of an older version.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#219

Post by jacques_chester »

shabble wrote: post #218
jacques_chester wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I must insist that folk can only take this view because they have not studied law. Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. The complexity of law is emergent from the problem domain. It doesn't require a conspiracy against the public to be that way. It merely requires the existence of a sufficiently large and diverse pu…

> Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. Although it seems like there is also the accretion of "legalistic debt" (c.f. technical debt) when changes are made in response to (the perception of) urgent, high-profile problems. It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existi…

There's a certain amount of legislation which is of the be-seen-to-be-doing-something variety. But that too gets reformed now and then. Lots of legislators are ex-lawyers, they hanker to tidy the place up inbetween shitting on everyone.

> It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existing laws than it is to write a new, much simpler version that would cover all the same ground, get it passed, and repeal the older version.

Like software, it's easy to underestimate the complexity of the existing system and to overestimate the advantages of a single, sharp cutover.

The current system is not perfect, but it largely works by groping towards better solutions over time. Legal systems where the official concept of law is "we designed it ab initio with Pure Reason (tm)" tend to be just as riddled with contradiction and complexity. They just lie to themselves about it.

> I'm also curious about what effect changes to a particular law have on precedent based on an interpretation of an older version.

Most of the time it is very easy to make the connection. Either it's new legislation, in which case the legislature will amend the clauses that a court has interpreted differently from what they considered to be the intent. Or it's case law, for which every precedent is named and referenced. You can trace every legal principle back to its first expression.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#220

Post by jacques_chester »

rkda wrote: post #202
jacques_chester wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, only someone who hasn't studied law could say this. Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. Unlike lawyers, we can simply will some of that away. We can make an enum which smooshes together disparate phenomena, that feeds a dropdown list and require the customers to use it. We can ignore very rare corner cases and include a comments field.…

So law is a machine learning problem?

Judicata think so.
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