Legal Code In a Version Control System? 334
coldmist writes "Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) is on the Senate Finance Committee, which just finished work on the health care bill. The committee recently rejected an amendment which would have required them to post the legislation for public viewing for 72 hours before it went to final vote. Several senators felt that the actual legal code would be too cryptic and complicated to be useful. Carper himself said, 'I don't expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life.' So, why don't they put it in SVN (or some similar version control system) where people can tkdiff the changes (i.e. new legislation is in a branch) or output a patchset? If a bill is passed, it's merged into the trunk. It just seems so logical to me, yet I can't find any mention of doing this on the web. What do you think?"
Too early yet (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea is fine and good, but the system probably runs too far behind everything else to take this up for some years to come.
If the legal code is too confusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Git? (Score:1, Insightful)
In a perfect world, where politicians and citizens wouldn't be digitally illiterate, a VCS woud be ideal.
Git could be used, in the sense of direct democracy and participation: anybody could propose changes, let them be voted and propagated up the hierarchy, and get them approved as the official laws of the state. Laws would even carry the full history of amendments (commits) and the names of the people who actually wrote them. /me dreams
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead what winds up happening is the men and women voting for the law don't understand the law themselves.
It gets voted in and suddenly there's a bunch of consequences which they never envisioned because the law gets implemented more-or-less as written and if that's radically different to what was intended - tough.
This has already happened a few times in the UK with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - local councils were given a bunch of snooping powers (which, we assume, were originally intended to help them weed out those who cheat council-administered benefits) are using them to track down the person who insists on putting paper in their glass recycling box.
Asking way too much of the lawyers. (Score:5, Insightful)
As PJ (over at Groklaw) likes to say, law is squishy.
Source code and law look a lot alike, but we have to remember that law is squishy.
We also should remember that lawyers are often seeking for an advantage for their clients (or constituents). This seeking for advantage runs counter to the work patterns of many of us who deal with free/open source stuff, but it is quite common in the legal world.
It would be a great tool for legislators who want the law to make sense, but such are too rare. The others would quickly find ways to pervert the tools.
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:2, Insightful)
I would rather deal with complicated texts and have more power in the hands of the voters (theoretically) than which ever judge you happen to get. In small towns judges would have more power than anyone.
That only works if the laws are kept simple enough that voters can control them. But if they are so complicated that voters can't even understand them (or even read hundreds of pages of legalese every time a new law relevant to them is passed), it won't work.
Even representative democracy doesn't help here as most politicians don't read through all the laws they sign either. In the current system each politician may have hundreds or thousands of pages of text delivered to him daily (not only the legal text but all the expert statements, etc. etc.), often about subjects they aren't very familiar with (Such as IT) and it can't be expected that they read through all of that text and manage to catch all the minor loopholes.
Then they can hire assistants to help them with that but it has a lot of problems too. (What laws are passed is no longer in the hands of the politicians but whether their assistants thought that some loophole was worth mentioning, if they even find it)
IANAL but I know several people who study law. They tell me horror stories about arguing for hours if it should be considered drunk driving when a drunk person accidentally switches off the breaks when he is just taking something from the car. I would prefer simple laws and judges' ability to judge over this kind of system.
Re:Lack of training/intelligence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, if you want to think the worst - perhaps those drafting the laws (frequently not those voting for them) don't want it to be easy to tell what changes a given law will introduce.
You're an idealist. (Score:4, Insightful)
The complexities take power away from judges, I suppose, but then they put the power in the hands of the lawyers, who have to interpret the laws for the judges.
I prefer keeping the law simple and being able to recall judges who get out of control.
Injustices are going to happen anyway, the only way to deal with that is to learn rudimentary social skills, so you can get others to help you correct them. (Or am I being unreasonably idealistic in asking that?)
Re:Lack of training/intelligence? (Score:5, Insightful)
... don't expect to actually read the legislative language ...
If United States Senators can't be bothered to read and comprehend the legislation they're voting on, then:
(1) why are they elected to posts that, as the most basic of job requirements, requires the ability to do so, and
(2) why haven't they been removed from office for complete and utter failure to serve the American people?
That's right, folks... your elected officials are attempting to pass legislation that will have massive consequences for our generation and several more to come, without having actually read the material they're about to vote on. Here's the best part: this is nonthing new. It's been the status quo for a huge chunk of Washington's electoral finest for longer than I've been alive. Outstanding work!
Formatting to minimize diff size is a huge problem (Score:2, Insightful)
One big problem is that the content would need to be in a consistent format that minimizes the size of diffs, or it will blowup immediately. Line breaks, indentation, page breaks, and other artifacts of formatting need to be ignored to make it intelligible. I'm not aware of any version control system that does this. Is anyone else?
Life is complex (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy is flawed. Asking lawyers to drop legalese is like asking programmers to drop programming languages.
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell is he on *any* committee for? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be sad, if it was not such an obscene state of affairs. Yet, it is a general indication of the state of politics and how it is trending. The election of George W. Bush, based on the persona he projects, was a clear indication that there are more and more people who are proud to be stupid. I'm not sure if the US leads the way in chasing ignorance, or just has a higher profile in doing so. I do know that, while entertaining to watch, this glorification of fucktardery made me shake my head when Forrest Gump was released. At least there, the stupid guy is good.
As to applying software development and maintenance techniques to legislation? Interesting idea. And the guy is talking bollocks when he says it is pointless to make legislation generally available for review.
Slashdot proves that concerned members of the public can read this stuff. We've got New York County Lawyer. So, yes, the set of people who can comment may be very restricted outside the legal profession. Yet, people like NYCL can give an interpretation of the legislation, sort of reverse-engineering it to whatever talking points the politicians fed to their highly-paid legalese generators. They can then point at the specific bits of the legislation, and you can judge for yourself if they match the analysis. Well, if you've not been indoctrinated to vegetate in front of Glenn Beck et al.
As long as you know where these volunteer legal analysts actually stand on issues, this would very valuable. They help tease out parts of the proposed laws that have obviously been fed into the process by lobbying groups who do not have the public's general welfare at heart.
Apart from the obvious implication that an elected official thinks, "the public who elected me are too stupid for me to make any effort to keep them informed of what I'm doing. It is a near-criminal offense to refuse to give people a chance to have their say on vital laws. In this case, the majority do want a public option, and in an ideal well-informed democracy those who do not would accept that.
As with all things political, and in a huge number of other areas, you should always follow Deep Throat's advice to Bob Woodward. Follow the money.
SVN must die! (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we should switch to more distributed (federalized? :) ) system? Like, allow states to branch laws in their private repositories?
Re:Too early yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seems consistent with every issue (Score:3, Insightful)
E.g. with "death panels"?
Yes, and about every other publicized issue in the U.S. over the last 10+ years.
It's the whole "it doesn't have to be right, just repeat it enough until it sounds plausible" mentality. When you have a population that is so easily manipulated, you end up with critical issues being decided based purely on which terminology gets the most publicity.
Re:Life is complex (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need to understand the linux kernel source to do some shopping in Konqueror. The kernel developers and GCC understand it perfectly, and that's what matters.
All of use are supposed to understand what the law says. Ignorance is not an excuse. But if Supreme Court judges can't even agree on what the law means, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I gave up a law degree to do computer science. But the fact is that if aliens abducted lawyers and programmers, the lawyers would be jauntily farewelled and the programmers forgotten.
But once the bank equipment stops being upgraded, people won't be saying "I wish we still had programmers". They'd be wishing they still had lawyers so they could work out how to get their money back without having to shoot people.
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:4, Insightful)
If programming languages was written in plain words we wouldn't need programmers, but the secret order of computer programmers refuse to do it that way - simple programming is not possible they claim. What they really are afraid of is the fact that normal humans (non programmers) could just diff the text to look for bugs and even make their own software.
PS! A lot of the people here at slashdot.org are members of this secret order so they will probably mod me down and try to shut me up - BUT justice will prevail.
Re:Too early yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Formal language (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly, what they need is to use a formal definition of the law, coupled with a system that can check and prove there is no inconsistency within it.
It would also make law trivial to apply, since the system can simply deduce what applies in the given situations, which means we wouldn't need lawyers anymore, and the role of judges would be greatly reduced and simplified.
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The legislative language isn't that important.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Plain language version"? "Corrected"? "Translated"? "Legislation that is passed on"? What on earth are you talking about? This is horrifyingly wrong. There is no "plain language version". Legislation is not "translated". Committees report a bill with specific language; though it may be amended later (generally on the floor, or in conference) there is no "correction".
And "The legislative language isn't that important"? That is so amazingly, completely, and gravely wrong that I have no idea where to start debunking it.
Yes, I AM a lawyer and I work on issues involving legislation every single day, so I fully expect I will get modded down. The perils of crowdsourcing.
Re:Too early yet (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as people walk into the voting booth going, "I have no idea who to vote for. I'll just vote for the name I recognize," politicians will sit in office for year-after-year. I suspect this is how we end-up with these lousy politicians like Conyers, who never bother to read the bills, and who should be kicked-out. We should be encouraging people NOT to vote if they have absolutely no clue what they are doing. i.e. Don't vote just for the sake of voting.
This is what I did in the last election - I voted for my president, my senators/congressman, and then saw a whole bunch of names for lower-level people I never heard of. Rather than make a random guess, as many voters do, I just left that part of the ballot blank. Sometimes a non-vote is better than just putting the previous bum back into office.
Re:Too early yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Also when they do refer to the bill, they do so in a dishonest fashion. When our president said "Does not provide coverage for illegal residents," and some guy yelled "You lie", the congress persons and other media commentators immediately looked at the bill and said, "Right here - will not cover illegal immigrants."
Yes it does say that. What it did NOT say, which nobody realized until about a week later, is that patients were not required to show any ID. The bill as written allowed people to simply walk into a hospital and demand healthcare, whether they were american, illegal residents, or foreign tourists just dropping-in for a visit.
This bill just like the Patriot Act has a lot of loopholes and flaws, which will only be discovered later, after it's passed. And when the Congressperson says, "I didn't know that was in there," they should be immediately voted out.
Re:Life is complex (Score:3, Insightful)
A very good point. And I hasten to point out that without a version control system, it would be virtually impossible for a large group to craft such a complex thing as the linux kernel. Now, since making laws is a collaborative exercise often resulting in highly complex legislation (like health care reform), then it stands to reason that the only way to achieve its goals without lots of "bugs" (ie unintended consequences, resource leaks, missing features, etc) would be to use some form of version control with incremental, easily diffed and peer-reviewed changes. The reviews would of course be documented so the public could see the reasoning behind the various components of the laws, and the debates, pro and con, that went into them.
Unfortunately this is not how politics work. The so-called "debate" is actually more like horse-trading. I'll vote to include ammendment X if you vote to allow ammendment Y. Or we'll throw in ammendment Z to get the votes of this particular block. Sadly, openness, peer-reviewing and indeed rational thought are anathema to the political process. Instead, this is a process (at least in the US) that relies upon bizarre procedures and rules, bartering and extortion, featuring such tricks as filibustering (http://www.yuricareport.com/Law%20&%20Legal/Senate%20Rules%20on%20Filibuster.html [yuricareport.com]) or procedural loopholes like reconciliation (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/politics/02hulse.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]). Small wonder we end up with so many unintended consequences.
Go all the way to normalized english (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not make the source itself a formal language? That way the idea of source code control for law would fall out naturally along with a better legal system.
From Example of Normalized English Input to NLESB [utk.edu]:
Normalized English has been developed by Layman E. Allen and his colleagues; see for example, Layman E. Allen, ``Language, Law and Logic: Plain Legal Drafting for the Electronic Age,'' Computer Science and Law (Bryan Niblett ed.), 1980, pp. 75-100. Normalized language has been used in the Tennessee statutes (Tenn. Code Ann. sect. 33-6-104(a) (1991)).
An example of the form of Normalized English used as input to the NLESB system follows. Note that the formatting is for the sake of readability, and is not necessary for NLESB.
Subsection (a). IF AND ONLY IF
(1)(A) A person has threatened or attempted suicide or to inflict serious
bodily harm on himself, OR
(B) The person has threatened or attempted homicide or other violent
behavior, OR
(C) The person has placed others in reasonable fear of violent behavior
and serious physical harm to them, OR
(D) The person is unable to avoid severe impairment or injury from
specific risks, AND
(2) There is a substantial likelihood that such harm will occur,
THEN
(3) The person poses a "substantial likelihood of serious harm" for
purposes of subsection (b).
Subsection (b). IF AND ONLY IF
(1) A person is mentally ill, AND
(2) The person poses a substantial likelihood of serious harm because of
the mental illness, AND
(3) The person needs care, training, or treatment because of the mental
illness, AND
(4) All available less drastic alternatives to placement in a hospital or
treatment resource are unsuitable to meet the needs of the person,
THEN
(5) The person may be judicially committed to involuntary care and
treatment in a hospital or treatment resource.
Re:If the legal code is too confusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Power to the People!
What? I'm serious. Better to put the power in the hands of the people, than a priest class, lawyer class, or some other oligarchy.
Legal Code - understandable and modular (Score:1, Insightful)
The health care bill requires that insurance policies all be written in "plain language" and refers to government regulations that define what that means. It should live up to the same requirement for all legislation. All bills should be clear, published for public review, brief, focused on a single topic, etc., in other words like good modular code that is subjected to peer review.
Many will assert that issues like health care are very complex and require complex legislation. This is not true for several reasons.
1) The U.S. Constitution is only 4,400 words and less than 10 pages.
2) Complex law is bad law because it will be subject to arbritary interpretation like our tax code.
3) Congress should not even try to manage our lives or the executive branch at a level of detail that requires thousands of pages to define.
4) The current practice is used purposefully to hide special earmarks and other features that would never pass if exposed to public scrutinany.
Political elitists (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: The voters who elected us are not only too stupid to make their own personal financial and healthcare decisions independent of government, but they are also too stupid to understand the laws that we are enlightened enough to impose on them.
They need to get over themselves. A friend of mine from Romania became a new American citizen this year. I showed him a "pocket" copy of the Constitution I have, and we started talking about it. He said that the greatest thing about it is its simplicity. Anyone with a decent vocabulary can read the Constitution and understand its plain language, even if English is their second language, even though it's now more than 200 years old.
It was a law written to be understood by the people. When the law is no longer simple enough to be understood by those who live under it, it becomes a weapon of tyranny.
And these politicians want to tell us that we are too stupid to understand how our own government works. They tell us this because if we believe it, they have power over us.
Re:Formatting to minimize diff size is a huge prob (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not aware of any version control system that does this. Is anyone else?
Huh? You're not aware of any version control systems at all? Strictly speaking it is the particular diff tool rather than the VCS that matters in this case, but every diff tool I've ever worked with has options specific to suppressing exactly the kind of trivial differences you've inexplicably cited as a "big problem."
You can't climb back up this slope (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is they're *all* "shitty bums." So it rarely matters what you do in the voting booth.
The root problem with our voting system is that it is specifically designed, both at the citizen level, and at the legislator level, so that any two uninformed individuals (of which we have a vast surplus) can outvote any informed person (of which we have a severe shortage.) Consequently, our system is degenerating at a steady pace, our liberties evaporating, our privacy eroding, our founding ideals moldering.
There is a (ridiculous) mindset out there that says that reasonably qualifying individuals to vote is "prejudicial"; these loonies imagine that it is racist or otherwise unfairly disenfranchising. However, the only people it disenfranchises are people who fail to become informed on the issues they're voting for. Obviously handing over this responsibility to a representative was supposed to solve the "uninformed" problem, but also obviously, it doesn't.
Watching the country implode upon its own founding precepts has become the national spectator sport. The chief betting issue being only whether the next blow to the country will come from the legislature, the courts, or the executive.
Re:Too early yet (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that different than the situation we have today?
The taxpayer would get stuck with all of the unpaid hospital bills (right now the hospitals eat them or try to make up the cost on those who have credit and can pay). Right now you only pay if you visit the hospital, but if the taxpayer has to pick up the tab then everyone pays regularly, even healthy people who rarely need hospital services. As bad as the present situation is this only makes it worse. The grandparents are correct: this bill is dishonest and the Democrats are pushing it dishonestly...period. Why do the Democrats shy away from having a head on debate about socialism and socialized medicine? Shouldn't they be proud of their socialism? Why do they try to sneak it through the back door? If their true position is too weak to stand up to real debate then they deserve to fail.
Fortunately, this is a much smaller problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's an enormous amount of existing code. Look at how much Slashdot talks about COBOL, which is around 50 years old. In common law countries (eg Britain, the USA and Australia), the law has code nearly a millennium old, written in a variety of languages.
Fortunately we're talking about a much smaller problem.
We're not talking about putting THE LAW into a revision control system. We're talking about putting THE STATUTES and PENDING LEGISLATION into a revision control sysetm. This excludes common law, administrative law, judicial interpretation and precedent, judicial striking of law for constitutional issues, judicial district differences in precedent, enforcement priorities, and a host of other things.
The constitution, the statutes, and their proposed revisions are exceedingly well structured for a computer-code-style revision tracking system.
Later such a system might be augmented to track things like judicial precedent, law review articles, history of enforcement, and the like in much the same way that current sysems can (or should B-) ) track documentation and its connection to code.
But the immediate target is eliminating the "too complex to understand so I didn't bother to read it" excuse that the legislators are using to pull con games on their opposition and the public.
Re:Too early yet (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>many hospitals are funded through their municipalities
Not where I live. All the hospitals are private businesses that rely upon having a positive cash flow to survive. One of them is owned by a church, which is strictly forbidden from receiving ANY taxpayer money (separation of church and state). The biggest hospitals in this region are owned by magacorporations. So when a poor person comes-in for emergency care, and can't pay the bill, the money comes out of the megacorp's pocket.
i.e. The ultrarich cover the cost of the poor who have no money.
As it should be. People say our healthcare system is broken, but that statement makes me think it's almost perfect and just needs some tweaking. Is it expensive? Well of course. So is repairing your car or your house. Turning the repair of your car, your house, or your body over to government is not going to magically make those costs become free.
Re:Too early yet (Score:3, Insightful)