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Pretty scary thought; makes me think about the Magna Carta and the idea that you couldn't be pulled into a court and charged for things not explicitly spelled o

Pretty scary thought; makes me think about the Magna Carta and the idea that you couldn't be pulled into a court and charged for things not explicitly spelled out in some body of law that folks could possibly know in advance. In other words administrative bodies could not produce some novel "law" on the spot and charge you with it. I long to see the day when laws and other civic documents are compiled and evolved in some source control like git or something domain specific for such documents.

pc86 9y ago
This "git for law" meme is a nearly constant refrain but it is simply not appropriate for legal text. Yes, for de minimus yet important changes, like changing a "shall" to a "may," it makes sense. For anything beyond that, trying to shoehorn legislation into a format and workflow design for software is a fool's errand at best.
- KingPrad 9y ago
  I disagree that version control is inappropriate. I worked for a company whose primary product was tracking government legislation through a database built on Subversion. (acted as a DB but used Subversion for a variety of reasons. I know it sounds strange). It seemed to work fine to record incremental changes, tag specific revisions as being checkpoints for various stages of review and approvals. And anyone could search current and historical versions. The overall legislation system needs flexibility to deal with complex and changing workflows, but storing documents (with change over time) and the links between them can be encoded just fine. As long as there are flexible ways to string them together, they can be represented in whatever structure makes sense: final law with all current amendments; original law, with amendments as annotations, separate pieces of legislation, linked by the overall law, etc. None of that has to be encoded in a super-strict heirarchy, but as long as it's all being stored in can be presented however one wants. I don't see the fatal flaw. I see imperfections and compromises, but not the flaw so bad as to say "don't bother".
  - jxramos 9y ago
    The key is incremental change I agree; if legislators only interact and record changes in final form with all the mass of changes dumped onto a user for review then such a project would be untenable. Small changes would really improve usefulness, and I daydream sometimes about what sort of dodgy log messages folks would use to obscure intent. Either way it could really empower a lot of analysis I'd imagine. Do you mind sharing with us the company and the product you developed in this space?
    - walshemj 9y ago
      Correct parliamentary procedure should track all motions changes and proposed changes (even those ruled out of order) to motions I certainly do as a member of a CBC / SOC (Conference Business Committee / Standing Orders Committee)
- KZeillmann 9y ago
  I'd at least like to see the diffs in a more readable format. Many laws are compilations of, "Amend [section of law] to read as follows: [new wording]"
  - walshemj 9y ago
    yes that is how its done you normally produce an omnibus showing motions with the amendments next to them plus a list of Consequentials eg if motion 57 passes motion 63 falls.
- adekok 9y ago
  The alternative is that we are unable to track changes in the law. Which to me, makes the law untrustworthy. Untrustworthy laws are rather more foolish than doing revision tracking on English text. I mean... FFS how hard is it to track changes to English text? Really?
- hueving 9y ago
  >trying to shoehorn legislation into a format and workflow design for software is a fool's errand at best. It's not for software, it's for text. Is the law no longer written in text?
  - walshemj 9y ago
    There are already "workflows" designed for parliamentary procedures Citrine's ABC of Chairmanship and Roberts rules are two examples.
    - bobwaycott 9y ago
      The suggestion isn’t to use git or a git-like for procedures, but for tracking the text of laws.
      - walshemj 9y ago
        Yes that is how Citrine and Roberts are used today in parliamentary systems I have been doing this for years for formal conferences. The procedure is similar to they way git is used for code though with a greater or lesser amount of automation - in the old days you had multiple documents and you physically cut and pasted them together to produce the final document
- jxramos 9y ago
  Looks like some fellas in Germany took a stab at it. I'm interesting in seeing how they've carried on since this taping back in 2013, sounded very manual but some pirate party adopted the idea if I understand him correctly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qql1Ess7qM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qql1Ess7qM
- petre 9y ago
  It's inappropriate if your goal is to obfuscate the law and make cross references to past laws, thus creating demand for more lawyers.

pc86 9y ago

This "git for law" meme is a nearly constant refrain but it is simply not appropriate for legal text. Yes, for de minimus yet important changes, like changing a "shall" to a "may," it makes sense. For anything beyond that, trying to shoehorn legislation into a format and workflow design for software is a fool's errand at best.

KingPrad 9y ago
I disagree that version control is inappropriate. I worked for a company whose primary product was tracking government legislation through a database built on Subversion. (acted as a DB but used Subversion for a variety of reasons. I know it sounds strange). It seemed to work fine to record incremental changes, tag specific revisions as being checkpoints for various stages of review and approvals. And anyone could search current and historical versions. The overall legislation system needs flexibility to deal with complex and changing workflows, but storing documents (with change over time) and the links between them can be encoded just fine. As long as there are flexible ways to string them together, they can be represented in whatever structure makes sense: final law with all current amendments; original law, with amendments as annotations, separate pieces of legislation, linked by the overall law, etc. None of that has to be encoded in a super-strict heirarchy, but as long as it's all being stored in can be presented however one wants. I don't see the fatal flaw. I see imperfections and compromises, but not the flaw so bad as to say "don't bother".
- jxramos 9y ago
  The key is incremental change I agree; if legislators only interact and record changes in final form with all the mass of changes dumped onto a user for review then such a project would be untenable. Small changes would really improve usefulness, and I daydream sometimes about what sort of dodgy log messages folks would use to obscure intent. Either way it could really empower a lot of analysis I'd imagine. Do you mind sharing with us the company and the product you developed in this space?
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Correct parliamentary procedure should track all motions changes and proposed changes (even those ruled out of order) to motions I certainly do as a member of a CBC / SOC (Conference Business Committee / Standing Orders Committee)
KZeillmann 9y ago
I'd at least like to see the diffs in a more readable format. Many laws are compilations of, "Amend [section of law] to read as follows: [new wording]"
- walshemj 9y ago
  yes that is how its done you normally produce an omnibus showing motions with the amendments next to them plus a list of Consequentials eg if motion 57 passes motion 63 falls.
adekok 9y ago
The alternative is that we are unable to track changes in the law. Which to me, makes the law untrustworthy. Untrustworthy laws are rather more foolish than doing revision tracking on English text. I mean... FFS how hard is it to track changes to English text? Really?
hueving 9y ago
>trying to shoehorn legislation into a format and workflow design for software is a fool's errand at best. It's not for software, it's for text. Is the law no longer written in text?
- walshemj 9y ago
  There are already "workflows" designed for parliamentary procedures Citrine's ABC of Chairmanship and Roberts rules are two examples.
  - bobwaycott 9y ago
    The suggestion isn’t to use git or a git-like for procedures, but for tracking the text of laws.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      Yes that is how Citrine and Roberts are used today in parliamentary systems I have been doing this for years for formal conferences. The procedure is similar to they way git is used for code though with a greater or lesser amount of automation - in the old days you had multiple documents and you physically cut and pasted them together to produce the final document
jxramos 9y ago
Looks like some fellas in Germany took a stab at it. I'm interesting in seeing how they've carried on since this taping back in 2013, sounded very manual but some pirate party adopted the idea if I understand him correctly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qql1Ess7qM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qql1Ess7qM
petre 9y ago
It's inappropriate if your goal is to obfuscate the law and make cross references to past laws, thus creating demand for more lawyers.