Your entire system breaks down because it hinges on the notion that there exist objective and generally accepted definitions for the things you intend to describe. Moreover, the metrics for things you describe also do not exist. While one could say that we could make them, I'd respond by saying that in itself is simply kicking the can down the road. Instead of arguing that, say, gay marriage destroys marriage, we'd be arguing what marriage is, how it is destroyed, and how it should be measured. Also, just because society hasn't changed in a measurable way does not mean that it is unaffected. To use this model would be to rely on the notion of some kind of perfect set of tests, which I personally find impractical, if not impossible.
Heck, TDD is something we have to do because we're working with languages that aren't powerful enough to give us a clear precise spec of what we're writing a program to do. While it can help you weed our corner cases in your code, it doesn't produce a formal description of how your program works. The same goes for society. We can use something like TDD to look for corner cases and things we don't like, but ultimately (granted it would even work, which I doubt) we'd only be looking for things that the test writers didn't like and wanted to weed out.
Automated legal interpretation makes sense if you're looking for edge cases to get out of something or you're trying to do your taxes, but for other things it does not (1st, 2nd degree murder vs manslaughter, for example). Laws are just as much about their interpretation as they are about what's on paper. These interpretations tend to evolve over time with what society finds acceptable and proper, and I'm totally cool with that. Now if you have a machine that needs updating in this regard, how he heck do you keep it updated?
I'd venture to guess that legalese may almost be easier for NLP to interpret than modern English. It seems much more structured. I think automated interpretation of laws could definitely be used in an area like tax law. To be honest, I think it's completely unreasonable that it has not been done so already. Why do millions of Americans have to pay some intermediate body to do their taxes for them because the tax law is difficult for them to understand? Why do we write administrative rules that are so difficult for everybody to understand, full well knowing that everybody must understand them for society to function? That, to me is absurd.
Your entire system breaks down because it hinges on the notion that there exist objective and generally accepted definitions for the things you intend to describe. Moreover, the metrics for things you describe also do not exist. While one could say that we could make them, I'd respond by saying that in itself is simply kicking the can down the road. Instead of arguing that, say, gay marriage destroys marriage, we'd be arguing what marriage is, how it is destroyed, and how it should be measured. Also, just because society hasn't changed in a measurable way does not mean that it is unaffected. To use this model would be to rely on the notion of some kind of perfect set of tests, which I personally find impractical, if not impossible.
Heck, TDD is something we have to do because we're working with languages that aren't powerful enough to give us a clear precise spec of what we're writing a program to do. While it can help you weed our corner cases in your code, it doesn't produce a formal description of how your program works. The same goes for society. We can use something like TDD to look for corner cases and things we don't like, but ultimately (granted it would even work, which I doubt) we'd only be looking for things that the test writers didn't like and wanted to weed out.
Automated legal interpretation makes sense if you're looking for edge cases to get out of something or you're trying to do your taxes, but for other things it does not (1st, 2nd degree murder vs manslaughter, for example). Laws are just as much about their interpretation as they are about what's on paper. These interpretations tend to evolve over time with what society finds acceptable and proper, and I'm totally cool with that. Now if you have a machine that needs updating in this regard, how he heck do you keep it updated?
I'd venture to guess that legalese may almost be easier for NLP to interpret than modern English. It seems much more structured. I think automated interpretation of laws could definitely be used in an area like tax law. To be honest, I think it's completely unreasonable that it has not been done so already. Why do millions of Americans have to pay some intermediate body to do their taxes for them because the tax law is difficult for them to understand? Why do we write administrative rules that are so difficult for everybody to understand, full well knowing that everybody must understand them for society to function? That, to me is absurd.