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Hacking the Law

Posted by Soulskill on from the there's-an-arduino-for-that dept.

New submitter sethopia writes "Brooklyn Law School's Incubator and Policy Clinic (BLIP) hosted its first 'Legal Hackathon.' Instead of hacking computer code, attendees — mostly lawyers, law students, coders, and entrepreneurs — used the hacking ethos to devise technologically sophisticated solutions to legal problems. These included attempts to crowdsource mayoral candidacies in New York City and hacking model privacy policies for ISPs."

14 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. SVN for law by dargaud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.

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    Non-Linux Penguins ?
    1. Re:SVN for law by jimshatt · · Score: 5, Funny

      Can't wait to use 'svn blame'...

    2. Re:SVN for law by ComaVN · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Somalia does this, except they use git.

      --
      Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
    3. Re:SVN for law by WrecklessSandwich · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.

      If we're going that route, the author/voting records should link to a database of campaign contributions as well.

    4. Re:SVN for law by digitig · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Rather than a version control system, I think it would be more useful to put the law into a requirements management system (after all, what is the law but a set of requirements?) That *might* help lawmakers to see if they are complete (cover what is intended to be covered), consistent and measurable. I don't know of any open source requirements management tools though -- at least, not ones that are still maintained. Perhaps requirements management goes against the hacker ethos (which would reduce the open source effort put into such things, although it wouldn't eliminate it completely of course). If requirements management is against the hacker ethos then I suspect that attempts to hack the law won't work very well.

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      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    5. Re:SVN for law by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In most countries without common law (I can speak first-hand about Italy and Germany), the laws are an unholy mess, impossible to read, search, and interpret; in most cases you have no hope other than asking a consult to a lawyer.
      You want the same people that spent at least 5 years studying this crap and make their living out of it to work actively to simplify it. It is a great idea, but I do not have any hope of seeing this applied.
      Shirky's law applies here as well: "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution".

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

    6. Re:SVN for law by Another,+completely · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But individual lawyers and legal secretaries could make this database their full-time job, in which case it wouldn't be a conflict for them any more. There is already an industry publishing books that list references from the law to cases where it was applied. This would be a natural extension, wouldn't it?

    7. Re:SVN for law by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Rather than a version control system, I think it would be more useful to put the law into a requirements management system (after all, what is the law but a set of requirements?) That *might* help lawmakers to see if they are complete (cover what is intended to be covered), consistent and measurable.

      If you try and push this, you'll run into serious real-world acceptance problems. In some cases the law is deliberately obtuse, obscure, open to misinterpretation, and so on. It's this way by design, because two various groups couldn't agree on any wording, or they were under pressure to create a law that violates the laws of physics but managed to word it in such a way that it may not, or it's meant to be interpreted in a way that's more or less the opposite of what it says, or a thousand other reasons. The law is not a Turing machine, and never will be. The last thing most politicians or lawyers would want is a comprehensive overview system of the kind that's being proposed in the above posts.

  2. interestingly lawyers do this anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    computer programmers try to play by the rules: they read the manual and then try to follow what they've learned. Lawyers, meanwhile, are hacking the laws by default. They're always trying to get around following the manual.

  3. Just read proposed legislation by MrKaos · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've read legislation and proposed changes or even proposed that the legislation be dropped altogether. I mainly got interested in the first round of cybercrime laws that proposed making me a criminal for using netcat nessus and the like.

    I set up simple word processing macros that addresses a well written and respectful letter to a list of target politicians (usually all of them). Most of the time I've received some sort of response. It makes it easier for the politician too because they can go straight to the parts of the legislation that are bothersome and move those amendments. If many politicians move the amendments they look insightful to the media, co-operative to their party and hard working to their supporters. Your correspondence, on paper, may make them consider things they hadn't. Also forget email - the retention rate is to low and not portable enough for them to talk to a colleague.

    There are many politicians that don't read the legislation at all and just vote on it because they have been sold an opinion or they have to tow the party line. This is why many of the non-partisan issues never get solved and no party want to give the other party the credit for solving a structural issue. So it remains an issue, if enough people write then they can say "Well I tried to do something".

    If more people do this it would really make a difference to the quality of the laws we get. I hope it catches on.

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    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  4. Redundant? by TFAFalcon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't hacking the law what lawyers do all the time? They study the law, find holes in it and exploit them.

  5. Re:Old invention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, the problem is not so much lack of hacking, but lack of proper code review.

  6. Re:Polishing a turd by ibwolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only way to make the legal system logical would be to throw it out and build another system from scratch.

    Yes, because - as every software developer know firsthand - when you throw out an old crufty system and develop a brand, sparkling, new one in its place it is always a smooth process that provides tremendous benefits

    </sarcasm>

  7. huh huh, huhuhuhuh... by Datoyminaytah · · Score: 5, Funny

    Feels as though nobody cares if my case is won So I might as well begin to find a loophole on my own Hacking the law, Hacking the law...

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    assert(birth_date<time-86400)