Very encouraging to see "Public sector automated decision-making" will be one of new projects at Law Commission (E&W) lawcom.gov.uk/news/law-com... We published Margaux McQuilton's pre-print report on ADM osf.io/a7jwc We see logic-driven systems taking human decision-makers to the right questions

Looking for a really simple explainer? The #ECHR and #HRA on post-it notes.

In which we bid farewell to Professor Michael Rush. A kind, generous and gentle man. More notes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I: ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

the professionalisation of legislative drafting (only 150 years or so in the UK) and the unlikely nature of any oversight. Implied repeal is an argument of last resort. If made it indicates someone has no real arguments. Hard to identify the last time such an argument was successful.

This is the first time I have seen L4 running in the wild, which is exciting. I have some thoughts...

A wee bank holiday treat for you guys. More week - well, fortnight - notes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I. In which we approached ramming speed, only to collide head-on with documentation buffers. Rescued in part by the kindness of strangers ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

Here are some results from our work with the L4 team at SMU - getting legislative drafters to produce basic visualisations by showing how to make propositional logic versions of their drafts #RulesAsCode

The last day of ICAIL had a lot of papers directly relevant to #RulesAsCode, and at least three papers about getting LLMs to do the encoding. A lot of unanswered questions, still, but it seems like some of the design choices I made about Blawx v2 to help codegen were well founded.

☀️ We’re here too - getting ready for the 7th NLLP workshop (8/Nov @emnlpmeeting.bsky.social ) 🚀✨ The updated Call for Papers is coming soon — stay tuned! 📣📄 💙 Follow us & spread the word about NLLP🌍💬 🔗 Keep an eye on the website for updates! 🖥️🔍 nllpw.org/workshop/ #NLLP #legaltech #nlproc #nlp

This afternoon we will host a Work-in-Progress session with visiting PhD candidate Filipa Paes (University of Oxford), who will be presenting a paper on ‘Juridical Bivalence’. The event is pre-read, so make sure to get in touch if you’d like to receive a copy! www.law.ed.ac.uk/news-events/...

This is a really good interview with the fabulous Matt Lynch on Lawmaker - start with imagination not code, he says. modparl.substack.com/p/lawmaker

A bank holiday treat for you all. More weeknotes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I. For some definition of ‘week’ ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

Celebrating Liberation Day here in #JerseyCI. Very pleased to have bumped into @gillycarr.bsky.social leading historian of the Occupation. Work is under way to put on the web all of Jersey’s old legislation - that will help research into Occupation legislation & government, and postwar reaction.

👋 A Statute Law Society Conference 'Legislation and the Constitution: Renton 50 Years On' Keynote speech by Lord Sales, Justice of the Supreme Court. ⏰ 6th June 2025 PLUS pre-conference lecture by Professor Jeremy Waldron 5th June 2025 For more information: www.statutelawsociety.co.uk/conference

6/ The Bill - the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill - has now been published - 90 minutes before the debate in the Commons starts at 11am. Comprises 10 clauses over 5 pages of text. www.gov.uk/government/p...

We write prose and code to help us think. With the side benefit that the prose might be read, and the code might be read by a computer. Legislation as an interesting overlap?

A break from digitising legislation- Out now, book chapter on Brexit's effects on UK/EU's constitutional/legal relations with Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man) & 14 last British Overseas Territories (incl Gibraltar & Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus) link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

More than 3,300 obsolete laws from 19th century set to be repealed www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

Emboldened by Vinho Verde, I’m prepared to go one step further. Software is not merely “politics”. It is, to all intents and purposes, the functioning part of the constitution. All else is bells, whistles and inappropriate politeness

"Ever wondered how Jersey’s laws are made?" - of course you have - www.instagram.com/reel/DHLdDLE...

Had to do the 5 mile commute into the office again today - lovely weather #JerseyCI #OriginalJerseyNotNewJersey

🔸Demos of logic maps & other visualisations - work with SMU Centre for Digital Law 🔸Unique IDs for legislation paras (h/t Hamish Fraser) in Word & web, for pop-ups linking words to definitions (incl in Interpretation Law) 🔸Using "may", "may not" & "may only" #RulesAsCode substack.com/@digitallegi...

#RulesAsCode : rencontre portant sur l’avenir de la gouvernance et des services numériques. Les 17 et 18 mars 2025, la #DINUM organise à #Paris la rencontre “Rules as Code Europe” avec #GovTech4All, un programme européen de promotion du numérique dans les administrations publiques européennes.

Join us for the #RulesAsCode Community of Practice Roundtable Meeting on March 19, 2025 from 1-2pm ET. 📜 AI for SNAP & Medicaid RaC translation 💞 Insights from the community 🔮 Discussion on the year ahead Please join RaC CoP to receive the invite! beeckcenter.org/raccop

We're working with SMU Centre for Digital Law on using their L4 to code legislation in a way that is human-readable & gives visualisations. For demos & info so far see- www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtq_... www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq6m... osf.io/jauqb More later at crlp-jerseyldo.github.io/work/an-ide-...

Interested in formalising/digitising logical structures in legislation (& other law)? Here's a gold-mine - collected abstracts of Guido Governatori's work 1995-2024 - defeasible deontic logic - explainable AI in law - Prolog & other logic-driven computer systems… www.governatori.net/papers/2024/...

Very pleased to see this published by LSPR, and looking forward to their symposium this weekend on #RulesAsCode

For those interested in free access to legal information, AustLII Co-Directors Philip Chung and Andrew Mowbray were today honoured by being appointed as Members of the Order of Australia (AM). The AustLII Media Release concerning the appointments is at: www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/anno...

It’s finally out! After years of work, I’m very glad to announce that my #book Algorithmic Rule by Law is now published @cambup-law.bsky.social. If you’re interested in the intersection of #law, #technology and #government - with some philosophical twists - this book is for you.

If deregulation is going to be one of the foundations of Labour's growth strategy, it won't go far by assuming that burdensome rules are something imposed on everyone by faceless bureaucrats. Truth is - politicians, businesses, consumers, media are constantly calling for more regulation.

The biannual REUL/Assimilated Law update has been released yesterday, so let's have a look tl;dr slow continuation of working through elements, but still various issues 1/ www.gov.uk/government/p...

I've been reading old(er) blogs on document automation and templates. I'd love to interview doc auto companies that are not turning to GenAI about what they're doing now and why. Is anyone else wondering what happened to traditional doc auto and wanting to bring it back?

President Biden ordered the US federal government to start a #RulesAsCode pilot project for cybersecurity laws and regulations. I am beginning to think 2025 may be a tipping point for RaC. #legaltech

Don't look now, but PwC is talking about #RulesAsCode, too. www.pwc.com/m1/en/public...

A window into the blackbox - longer form thoughts on new latest batch of algorithms published by the UK Government medium.com/@imogencathe... @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social and ht @halcyene.bsky.social

5️⃣But that can obfuscate the level of deference given to AI. Those using the tools might overly defer to it seeing it as expert (or too complex to interrogate) - just 'rubber stamping a decision' - or indeed ignore it altogether. The guidance does tackle this - with egs where AI 'helps' a decision.

4️⃣It's possible that the phrase "significantly influences" here is open to some interpretation. Through our work on the ground, we’ve encountered numerous algorithmic tools developed or sold as decision-support rather than decision-making tools.

This morning the UK Gov published a new batch of entries of algorithms in use in the public sector (on their Algorithmic Transparency Reporting Standard). www.gov.uk/algorithmic-... Long form response tomorrow coming, but a quick 🧵 @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social

My experience is in the #RulesAsCode space. If, for example, you are trying to ensure a legislative drafter and a client department have the same understanding of the effects of a proposed amendment, not being able to calculate whether "the minister approves" is a non-issue.

It is a myth that you can't encode vague terms. You can't (easily) compute them, and that is a real but different problem. Not every use case requires computing. With the right tooling, uncertain inputs can generate conditional answers. Code can say "it depends" too. 😅 #RulesAsCode

📚 You can find today’s impartial research on the Commons' Library website: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-for...

A lost essay by HLA Hart published for the first time the American Journal of Jurisprudence. “Policy, Principles, and Adjudication.” academic.oup.com/ajj/advance-...

'Imagine he has no hats. If he has no hats, then the statement “All my hats are green” is true.' I don't think so. The statement "All my hats are green" says that you have hats

The House of Commons Library is a national treasure, and this looks like a really valuable primer, by David Torrance, on how laws are made, where powers are exercised, and what we need to know if we want to understand how (and by whom) we're governed. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Tired: Starter Packs Wired: Custom Feeds I made these to make sense of the firehose. Maybe you'll like them too. AI Talk: bsky.app/profile/davi... AI & the Law: bsky.app/profile/davi... AI Papers: bsky.app/profile/davi... Law-like Talk: bsky.app/profile/davi... Law Papers: bsky.app/profile/davi...

Me: the legal system can’t possibly be more unjust or racist. The universe: Bet. (Actually too many comments to make about this but I’m really tired so let’s just say 🤡🤡🤡🤡) (Found via LinkedIn)

#Legaltech flocks to Bluesky  - Legal IT Insider

Law,Technology and Humans: new issue out lthj.qut.edu.au/issue/view/140

For those interested in #rulesascode, consider joining racguild.org. Check out what it's about at www.racguild.org/charter

Thank you Jason Morris (@lexpedite.bsky.social) for generously sharing your insights on different ways of categorising #rulesascode languages, covering the computational paradigm, target markets, features and licensing at our last RaC Guild townhall. Find it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC65...