The Law's New Language?

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Law and Technology Megan Ma

Shift in law from descriptive language to code is a question of linguistics. The language of code doesn't work in the same way as legal language does, in ways with profound implications that we should think through carefully.

Notes

Language is often conceived as the vehicle in which legal norms could embed itself; the house but not the home

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machines are interpreting the language of legal processes

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how does the “code-ification” of legal language differ from existing legal practice? More importantly, does this change the inherent character of the law?

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“mandate of the prediction imperative,”[1] a pursuit of certainty that regards complete and total information as ideal

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legal indeterminacy is perceived as a threat

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Micro-directives

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The presumption that machines are able to generate neutral sets of information, then translate such information into perfectly comprehensible instruction, is evidently misinformed

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premise that translation operates without interpretation

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conferring the rule of law to code

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The traffic light is regarded as translating legal complexity to a simple command

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simple commands are passively understood as progress towards increased efficiency and utility in the law

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Code becomes the sole bearer of value and semiotic vessel in which the law embeds itself

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underlying assumption is that law and its language exist in a state of universality and is logically reducible

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belief that description is distinct from interpretation

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Despite the capacity to express contracts in an alternative computable form, there is no means for interpretation

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is the aim of the law merely to signpost?

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conceived argument as systematically formulaic

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“Meaning,” she states, “…depends on the curious entanglement of self-reflection, rational discourse and emotional awareness that hinges on the opacity of our dynamic and large inaccessible unconscious. Data, code…do not attribute meaning.”

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necessitate a shift from reason to statistics

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falsely interpreting abstraction as verity

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