Andrej Krištofík (Masaryk University) has posted Indeterminacy of Legal Language as a Guide Towards Ideally Algorithmisable Areas of Law (Law, Technology and Humans, volume 6, issue 2, 2024) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article delves into the relationship between language in law and the automation of legal decision-making processes. The conflict arises between the indeterminate language of the law and the necessary precision ofalgorithmic language, where the first needs to be translated into the other during the process of automation. The articleseeks to provide definitions as well as the necessary excursion into the role of indeterminacy in the legal language tobe able to shed a light on this process. In this regard, the article examines several problematic examples of the currentlyutilised algorithmic systems in legal decision-making. Subsequently, the article sets forth its thesis: that indeterminatelanguage used within legal rules sets out the perimeter for areas suitable for the process of automation, determined bythe very nature of such areas of law as a negative demarcation. Lastly, it provides language-based positivedemarcations for such areas. Further, by examining the theory of legal indeterminacy, the article shows that theconclusion does not in fact lie in the technical impossibility of creating an indetermined algorithm, but rather in thevery purpose of such language – that of mandating a value judgement. The conclusion of this article thus seeks to betechnologically neutral by providing a different route of the purpose examination to reach it, rather than technologicalimpossibility, which may change in time.