> Writing laws to cover complex situations is really not THAT different from writing software.
I’ve done software (a lot) and worked in a legislative office (a little), they are extremely different.
> Laws are programs.
Laws are not programs, or even meaningfully analogous to anything so deterministic. They are more like, if we must make a computing analogy, components of prompt templates (other portions of which will be filled by evidence and…well, a bunch of other stuff you don’t control when writing the laws) that will be used by an extremely high temperature LLM. Which you can’t actually test freely against, though you can observe past behavior – but, even then, you are stymied by the fact that the LLM itself is constantly updated with retrained, and sometimes rearchitected, versions, without useful release notes.
It's just that the programming language is mushy-- 400 definitions of the word "set" is the example my AI offers-- and the interpreters vary. In a pinch, the code writers know that nearly anything they write can be rescued by the chief interpreter, which has led to a model of legislatures intentionally writing ambiguous code and top-level courts interpreting with an emphasis on public good.
But, when you go down some arcane rabbit hole that will normally be interpreted by functionaries -- bankruptcy comes to mind-- suddenly everything is prescribed with remarkable precision and it becomes obvious again, law is code.
> But, when you go down some arcane rabbit hole that will normally be interpreted by functionaries -- bankruptcy comes to mind-- suddenly everything is prescribed with remarkable precision
If this were really true, there would be zero appellate cases (and probably not even trial cases, as the clear and only correct resolution would be apparent to all parties without a trial which would only add expense) in these areas, and yet... That's very much not the case.
If law, even in these areas, is “code”, it is so more in the sense of the Pirates Code in Pirates of the Carribean, not computer software.
The sociological implications of code is often not explored enough.
If you look at code as in, only syntax and its meaning for the language, I can see how folks might reason along the lines of 'law is similar enough to code. You are saying what can and can't be done'
However, code is rarely only its syntax. Its meaning is contextual, often to the business of which it applies, and would have no real meaning outside of that context, and context may change at any given time, which means reinterpreting the code, replacing the code etc.
That is what law in practice, is what code is in practice. Its syntax is very technical, but its meaning is entirely dependent upon its applied context.
I been thinking alot about this lately, and understanding the sociological implications of code in an organization (or in more extreme cases, society) has really changed my point of view of how to build software
I'm not taking a position for or against the argument that law is code, but making the observation that it contradicts itself. Particularly in the case of the 2nd amendment. The bill of rights is supposed to be a limitation on government itself, so this isn't merely a matter of jurisdiction. In the state I reside in, I can put a loaded gun in my pocket and go about my daily business. In my birth state it would be a crime to conceal it without a permit, and in NYC it would be a 3-1/2 year minimum sentence (unless you're an NFL player [1] in which case you get a plea deal of 2 years, so somehow "mandatory minimum" changes it's meaning)
If I were to translate this into code, it would mean that variables that were constant will sometimes still change value. It would mean that operations on data would differ depending on the scope in which the operations were applied. And it would mean that certain variables that were closer to the base address (more money) would operate differently than variables stored in distant memory offsets [2].
Here is an example of a law that reads more like code: 28 U.S. Code Chapter 37 - US Marshals Service[1]. Maybe an appellate court could be called on to interpret it once in a while, but really it's intended to provide clear, unambiguous step-by-step instructions to agents of government.
I’ve done software (a lot) and worked in a legislative office (a little), they are extremely different.
> Laws are programs.
Laws are not programs, or even meaningfully analogous to anything so deterministic. They are more like, if we must make a computing analogy, components of prompt templates (other portions of which will be filled by evidence and…well, a bunch of other stuff you don’t control when writing the laws) that will be used by an extremely high temperature LLM. Which you can’t actually test freely against, though you can observe past behavior – but, even then, you are stymied by the fact that the LLM itself is constantly updated with retrained, and sometimes rearchitected, versions, without useful release notes.