Catala – Law to Code

> The aim is not to formalise or put into code all the law, because that would make no sense, but we are interested in the law that is already executed automatically, such as the calculation of social benefits, tax or unemployment.

Can anyone explain why it's believed this "would make no sense"?

I assume it would fail to compile, or error out, because of myriad conflicts throughout the body of laws.

Law isn't written to cover 100% of real life scenarios and potential cases, it's written with deliberate parts of ambiguity, that will ultimately be up to courts to set the precedents for, in various situations and context.

I think the idea is that you can't really cover 100% of real-life cases in "code", either legal or software, so the areas you'll leave this out of would be those "not-entirely-strict" parts.

I think the primary reason is that laws are about human convention, not real objects which one can clearly and deliberately define. Like at the most basic level nothing exists at all except for quantum fields or something like that. Everything else we talk about on a regular basis, people, dogs, streets, businesses, etc, is defined by convention to a greater or lesser degree.

It is therefore quite hard to create a formal system to refer to objects in the world in a way which induces no contradictions with intuition. This is why we have courts, among other functions of government.

Basically, all human knowledge is an application of either math or philosophy, and law is philosophy, so cant be modeled by math

> Basically, all human knowledge is an application of either math or philosophy

Philosophy is not knowledge, it's pure speculation.

> law is philosophy, so cant be modeled by math

Law is not philosophy unless it was written based on sloppy speculations. In other words, what law is, depends on how it was written, it can certainly be modeled by logic and math methods can be developed for it too.

It's nothing new, lawyers have to master logic as part of their training.

A computer program takes digital bytes, runs some discrete logic on them, outputs some more bytes. Laws take messy real world stuff, run some subjective decision tree on them, and output some messy real world actions to take. If you model the former with the latter you end up 'shelling out' to human judgement every 2 words. Suppose you accidentally shoot somebody while duck hunting, the meaning or value of pretty much everything here can't be determined by a computer, so the code-law version of this random snippet of natural-language-law would be pretty useless:

> If it is found that the defendant did the killing or wounding, but that it was not intentional or negligent, the court shall dismiss the proceeding. Otherwise, if it is found that the defendant did the killing or wounding intentionally, by an act of gross negligence, or while under the influence of alcohol, the court shall issue an order permanently prohibiting the defendant from taking any bird or mammal.

Modelling intent, with math, is not going to happy. Law is based around the intent of those taking actions, and understanding intent is absolutely philosophy.

Understanding intent is understanding interest and that's not philosophy. If it's not about interest, it's psychiatry - not philosophy either.

Besides, only a lesser part of law is about intent, the major part is about punishing and avoiding harm, finding the true facts and applying the written law to them.

Down-voting can't change the truth, we've been led by the nose for far too long.

Have you been around on the internet when they discovered AI LLMs ?

The same can be said about driving but self-driving cars exist.

To avoid harm, you must identify intent.

To punish, you must establish intent.

Intent has been the core underiding feature of the law since the Magna Carta. To ignore or trivialise it is nothing short of advocating for the return of kings.

A lot of law is based around subjective gray lines. “How would a reasonable person behave in this unique situation?” Is at the root of a lot of legal situations.

Write a function for that, keeping in mind that “this situation” needs to be modeled with potentially infinite variables. Then try to define a “reasonable person”.

Hell, the reason most trials happen is because there is huge grey area, and the written laws are not obvious as to what the outcome should be.

Commercial law nuts and bolts is very algorithmic often.

Criminal law is often fundamentally subjective, incorporating questions of intent and remorse.

So is the "bitter lesson" that fuzzy overlords will be practically preferable to hand coded legislation?

It does stand to reason that all law could be formalized. For example, consider the definition of murder in the first degree from 18 USC § 1111:

"Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought."

You might say, well, "unlawful" and "malice" are fuzzy concepts; but we can take them to be facts that we input into the model. I guess we could write something like this in Catala:

    scope Murder :
      definition in_the_1st_degree
        under condition is_malice_aforethought and is_unlawful consequence
      equals
        true

In the calculation of social benefits and taxes, the facts input to the model are generally things like prices, depreciations, costs, areas of offices, percentages and so on, input numerically and sworn to be true. These numbers are then used to calculate an amount due (or in arrears). Performing the calculation in a way that is verified to conform to the law is a big part of the work.

However, in other areas of law, determining the facts is actually where the real work is -- was there malice aforethought? A formalized legal machine could process these facts but it's not a big help. The models would just be a huge list of assumptions that have to be input and a minimal calculation that produces `true` or one of the alternatives of an enum.

> Intent has been the core underiding feature of the law since the Magna Carta.

I've already explained that intent is another word for interest - material or political, it may not be as trivial as potato chips but it's far simpler than rocket science.

> To ignore or trivialise it is nothing short of advocating for the return of kings.

Another purely speculative assertion with zero meaning or practical value.

There's no logical path from trivializing your occultist and unknowable notion if intent to the return of kings. First, you've got to start with a proof that at present there aren't any kings... but philosophy's got no proofs.

Speaking of kinks (sic), wasn't Epstein one of them? Or at least under their protection... until he wasn't, as usual.

If intent were so simply explained, then the High Courts across the world would serve no function - as interpreting intent is their core role.

Material interest and intent only accidentally collide. Intent cannot be defined in that manner.

Almost every person beneath a capitalist system has a material interest in wealth. That does not translate to intent to seize it.

If intent does not matter, only interest, then there is no war crime in bombing boats. There is no arguing with the government's interpretations of law, as they will have a vested interest as to how it plays out.

The "test of intent" is not a part of law to be so offhandly thrown aside.

> Almost every person beneath a capitalist system has a material interest in wealth. That does not translate to intent to seize it.If intent does not matter, only interest, then there is no war crime in bombing boats.

That's a different topic, legislative intent is different from criminal intent, the latter does not change the fact of wrongdoing, only the severity of it. Bombing sailors in a wreckage situation is either a war crime or gross military incompetence which may lead to court-martial. This together with interest-as-motive are decided based on facts and logic, not philosophy - these arguments support my view, not yours.

You definition of philosophy does not seem to match the broader scientific one.

Philosophy is the science of understanding logic. Founded on Aristotles, Plato, and others. Rational process is derived directly from philosophy.

An appeal to facts and logic, is and always has been, an appeal to philosophy.