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 met

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.