Matthew Waddington

If we needed new draft legislation to criminalise burglary, surely it shouldn’t fail the tests just because we know some people will still burgle, or even because some police forces will not investigate and deter?
Or is this just me not really knowing what test-driven means?

We might.
But this one doesn’t look like a problem with the drafting, which requires “highly effective” age measures & tells OFCOM to give guidance. Isn’t this about either providers not following OFCOM or OFCOM’s guidance being too lax? Or policy wrongly assuming affordable effective tools exist??

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.

NLLP Workshop 2025 The seventh workshop on Natural Legal Language Processing (NLLP 2025) explores methods and applications of Natural Language Processing for the Legal Domain by focusing on legal text and text with lega...

☀️ 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

You mean as in encoding - L4, DataLex, Blawx, Catala, LegalRuleML, AkomaNtoso etc? Not as in Napoleonic codification?

Pia Andrews - Regional Innovation and Digital team, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub | LinkedIn Experience: Regional Innovation and Digital team, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub · Location: Canberra · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View Pia Andrews’ profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 bi...

Mr Pants is right - Pia spread “Rules as Code” from NZ to Oz & beyond - www.linkedin.com/in/pia-andre...

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/...

For those who don't have access to the final published version, there is now a free preprint version here osf.io/preprints/so...

Start With Imagination, Not Code Lessons from Building a Shared Legislative Platform

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

Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill Draft legislation to protect the UK steel industry.

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?

Legislating for Risk and Precaution: Bridging the Divide between Science and Law for Biosecurity This book aims to demystify the law for scientists and instructing officials by exploring the science and legal concepts of risk and precaution for national legislation to facilitate safe trade in agr...

Resuming normal service - I also have a forthcoming chapter "Digitizing Legislation: Progress and Prospects" in the book "Legislating for Risk and Precaution: Bridging the Divide between Science and Law for Biosecurity" edited by Black, Moloney & Graffham
www.routledge.com/Legislating-...

New Relationships for the Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories Brexit’s effects were felt not just between the UK and EU but also had profound effects in other jurisdictions with special relationships to the UK. The Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and ...

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 Laws include proclamations on beatings with sticks and nettles, breaking eggs and an order banning a Daniel O’Connell rally

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

Logic maps, definition pop-ups, "may"/"may not", and more What we are up to in 2025

🔸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...

“Rules as Code Europe” : March 17th and 18th in Paris. Programme européen de promotion du numérique dans les administrations publiques européennes.

#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

YouTube video by Jersey LDO CRLP work with Singapore team on L4 visualisations of legislation

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.

Wow! Legislation as loyalty oath - & this s1 only comes after 6 pages of long title plus 7 pages of recitals mostly recounting the mighty deeds of Trump. USA & its States really do have a different take on what belongs in legislation from any other Anglophone country www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill...