On 02/27/2012 12:57 AM, David Woolley wrote:
The software analogy is flawed in that software has to be understood by a machine and is written in a language with very precisely defined semantics. Legal documents are written to be interpreted by a human and, unfortunately, legal language is not a simple formal languageThe structure of laws, courts, and contracts is indeed a machine that executes statements of rules. That it does so /fuzzily/ and through human rather than machine elements is not necessarily a /flaw /of the system, in that it is invariably asked to handle unforseen problems, and extends itself by doing so.
A machine-executed language for legal rule sets is a frequently expressed, unachieved dream. But any program in such a language would necessarily be closed in its capabilities, and would need to fall back on humans for those unforseen problems. So, you wouldn't lose the courts or the arguing over what something "really means".
Thanks
Bruce
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