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I just don't understand how come legalese can't be replaced with some kind of mathematical formal system? A few lawyers I shared this view with laughed at me, b

I just don't understand how come legalese can't be replaced with some kind of mathematical formal system? A few lawyers I shared this view with laughed at me, but after some digging I realized that was because they lacked a proper training and believed that English was more expressive than Math. Wrong: math is the language that describes the world around us, surely it can be used to describe their stupid laws, which can't even approach the laws of nature in complexity. Sure such language won't be readable by regular folks, but that's not the point. Such "mathematized legalese" would be made readable by computers and translated into all sorts of usable applications: for instance you can do almost automatic "legislation simulation" without even going to a court room: given two theorems (legal agreements) and variable bindings (facts) a computer (judge) could estimate your chances of winning without wasting a single dollar on lawyers. Am I an idiot because I see nothing wrong with this?

jimbokun 18y ago
Here is how you would test your system. Translate a nation's entire legal code into your system. Pick a bunch of cases in the sub-domain of law you want to tackle first. Find a way to model the evidence and agreed upon facts of the case (I'm guessing this will be especially difficult). Run your system on the translated laws and information on each case, then compare the results to how the court actually ruled. If you were able to predict outcomes with high accuracy, you would have an extremely valuable tool and can retire soon if you market it effectively.
newt0311 18y ago
Because a mathematically rigorous system would have to be too complicated to account for all the laws that are in effect in the US. Note that your system would have worked ~100 years ago when laws were significantly simpler. Move back another 100 years and it would be trivial: just enumerate the requirements for contract (mutual consent + commitment) and tortuous interference of property to codify the basis of 90% of classical English law. Also, if you read contracts, it basically is math written out in english.
pavlov 18y ago
Such a system would be particularly valuable for the European Union. The EU has over 20 official languages, and all legislation approved by the EU needs to be translated into all of the languages. (The situation is further complicated by several categories of laws: EU regulations are practically equal to federal laws, whereas EU directives are "law blueprints" that must be translated into national law, thus giving member states some leeway on how to implement them.) I don't know exactly how EU lawmaking works (nor do I really want to know too much about what goes on in that monstrous Brussels/Strasbourg sausage factory), but I'd presume that the law drafts are most commonly worked out in English and French. A final document is then produced in either of these dominant languages, but it's written in a specific form to make it easier to translate into 20+ languages without catastrophic signal loss. Your system could replace that subset of English or French... And it might actually be fairly easily accepted by EU officials because it would offer a scientific, seemingly objective solution to the perennial problem of what language the EU itself speaks (currently the situation is rather close to "all EU languages are equal, but some are more equal than others").
jgfoot 18y ago
Laws have varying degrees of clarity. Laws about what side of the road you must drive your car on are clear. Others aren't. Consider the FTC Act: "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." Turning that into mathematical language would not be useful, because all the work is being done by one, largely undefined, word: "unfair." Courts have, over time, given a rich and complex meaning to that word. In English. Some law is already formalized, enough so that it can be, and has been, translated into software code. TurboTax is a good example of this; it doesn't capture the entire tax code, and it apparently doesn't get everything right (ask Timothy Geithner), but it does dramatically illustrate the extent to which the tax code is determinate. (Self-plug: the U.S. federal sentencing guidelines are also highly determinate, although actual sentences are not, and a web site I run lets lawyers calculate these sentences). If you are interested in this area, take a look at XBRL, an XML dialect used by financial institutions to make some legally required reports in a highly formalized manner.

jimbokun 18y ago

Here is how you would test your system. Translate a nation's entire legal code into your system. Pick a bunch of cases in the sub-domain of law you want to tackle first. Find a way to model the evidence and agreed upon facts of the case (I'm guessing this will be especially difficult). Run your system on the translated laws and information on each case, then compare the results to how the court actually ruled. If you were able to predict outcomes with high accuracy, you would have an extremely valuable tool and can retire soon if you market it effectively.

newt0311 18y ago

Because a mathematically rigorous system would have to be too complicated to account for all the laws that are in effect in the US. Note that your system would have worked ~100 years ago when laws were significantly simpler. Move back another 100 years and it would be trivial: just enumerate the requirements for contract (mutual consent + commitment) and tortuous interference of property to codify the basis of 90% of classical English law. Also, if you read contracts, it basically is math written out in english.

pavlov 18y ago

Such a system would be particularly valuable for the European Union. The EU has over 20 official languages, and all legislation approved by the EU needs to be translated into all of the languages. (The situation is further complicated by several categories of laws: EU regulations are practically equal to federal laws, whereas EU directives are "law blueprints" that must be translated into national law, thus giving member states some leeway on how to implement them.) I don't know exactly how EU lawmaking works (nor do I really want to know too much about what goes on in that monstrous Brussels/Strasbourg sausage factory), but I'd presume that the law drafts are most commonly worked out in English and French. A final document is then produced in either of these dominant languages, but it's written in a specific form to make it easier to translate into 20+ languages without catastrophic signal loss. Your system could replace that subset of English or French... And it might actually be fairly easily accepted by EU officials because it would offer a scientific, seemingly objective solution to the perennial problem of what language the EU itself speaks (currently the situation is rather close to "all EU languages are equal, but some are more equal than others").

jgfoot 18y ago

Laws have varying degrees of clarity. Laws about what side of the road you must drive your car on are clear. Others aren't. Consider the FTC Act: "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." Turning that into mathematical language would not be useful, because all the work is being done by one, largely undefined, word: "unfair." Courts have, over time, given a rich and complex meaning to that word. In English. Some law is already formalized, enough so that it can be, and has been, translated into software code. TurboTax is a good example of this; it doesn't capture the entire tax code, and it apparently doesn't get everything right (ask Timothy Geithner), but it does dramatically illustrate the extent to which the tax code is determinate. (Self-plug: the U.S. federal sentencing guidelines are also highly determinate, although actual sentences are not, and a web site I run lets lawyers calculate these sentences). If you are interested in this area, take a look at XBRL, an XML dialect used by financial institutions to make some legally required reports in a highly formalized manner.