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Policy enforcement and law automation - It's ridiculous that we spend so much money and time dealing with legal issues - both in terms of creating new laws, an

by harigov 11y ago

Policy enforcement and law automation - It's ridiculous that we spend so much money and time dealing with legal issues - both in terms of creating new laws, and in terms of enforcing those laws. Because of the delineation between those who create laws and those who enforce them, we came up with a way of encoding law so as to avoid misinterpretation errors. What if we were to automate the enforcement by programming law into a computer rather than writing down the rules in a book? How would we go about accomplishing that? Would we always struggle because computers lack "empathy"? Is there a middle way that automates 90% of the cases while retaining some human control?

autopov 11y ago
This is an excellent idea. I spent a year at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The number of statutes and regulations for just CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) [1] for example fills 425 pages. The department also oversees building codes, liquid pipeline infrastructure, wildlands defense, fire & rescue, etc. Whenever a new or amended statute is introduced it takes months to evaluate if it replaces or conflicts with existing code. If passed and signed into law it can take a year or more to integrate. Every year a newly-elected legislator introduces a bill akin to simplifying existing laws. Every year these bills never make it out of committee (i.e., they are shelved) because it would require years of pulling committed resources (SMEs, analysts, support personnel and millions of dollars) out of threadbare operations. Every department in the State draws up a similar analysis, and the cumulative cost scares the legislature/governor. But it's a good way to introduce the green legislator into how the state government works. The joke in the halls of the Natural Resources building is that there are too many rules and regulations, but there are not enough resources to correct the situation. F&FP had no central repository of its own codes. Analysts had to use keyword searches of the public California Codes website! [1] http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/docs/2014_CEQA_Statutes_and_Guidelines.pdf http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/docs/2014_CEQA_Statutes_and_Gui...
- harigov 11y ago
  I think programming evolved from math oriented folks, which is why we find it unnatural to reason about law and other societal constructs using a programming language. I wonder how it would look if it were built for an entirely different purpose. It would be really interesting if Y Combinator invests in that research effort.
petke 11y ago
Are you talking about Robocop?
- harigov 11y ago
  No, more like replacing judiciary/lawyers with programmers and software. Imagine that law is encoded as a program that validates the conditions and gives out a judgement. Lawyers from both sides get together to program what happened in an event and the computer processes that and gives out a judgement.

by harigov 11y ago

autopov 11y ago

This is an excellent idea. I spent a year at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The number of statutes and regulations for just CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) [1] for example fills 425 pages. The department also oversees building codes, liquid pipeline infrastructure, wildlands defense, fire & rescue, etc. Whenever a new or amended statute is introduced it takes months to evaluate if it replaces or conflicts with existing code. If passed and signed into law it can take a year or more to integrate. Every year a newly-elected legislator introduces a bill akin to simplifying existing laws. Every year these bills never make it out of committee (i.e., they are shelved) because it would require years of pulling committed resources (SMEs, analysts, support personnel and millions of dollars) out of threadbare operations. Every department in the State draws up a similar analysis, and the cumulative cost scares the legislature/governor. But it's a good way to introduce the green legislator into how the state government works. The joke in the halls of the Natural Resources building is that there are too many rules and regulations, but there are not enough resources to correct the situation. F&FP had no central repository of its own codes. Analysts had to use keyword searches of the public California Codes website! [1] http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/docs/2014_CEQA_Statutes_and_Guidelines.pdf http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/docs/2014_CEQA_Statutes_and_Gui...

harigov 11y ago
I think programming evolved from math oriented folks, which is why we find it unnatural to reason about law and other societal constructs using a programming language. I wonder how it would look if it were built for an entirely different purpose. It would be really interesting if Y Combinator invests in that research effort.

petke 11y ago

Are you talking about Robocop?

harigov 11y ago
No, more like replacing judiciary/lawyers with programmers and software. Imagine that law is encoded as a program that validates the conditions and gives out a judgement. Lawyers from both sides get together to program what happened in an event and the computer processes that and gives out a judgement.