The possibility of encoding regulation to make it processable automatically by computers has been gaining attention within the legal discipline. With it, an abundance of terms has emerged as much as an array of academic discussions providing different examples, raising different concerns, while, unfortunately, having different premises in mind. This makes contributions within the field of what we refer to as ‘automatically processable regulation’ difficult to compare with each other and research results hard to transfer among different research projects and groups. To overcome this problem, we propose a typology that enables researchers to locate their research project within the domain of automatically processable regulation, understand what issues might arise depending on where within the typology a project falls, and determine the relationship between projects. The typology revolves around three dimensions: the primary aim of the project, the potential for divergence of interests amongst stakeholders, and the degree of mediation by computers.
The field of computational law has increasingly moved into the focus of the scientific community, with recent research analysing its issues and risks. In this article, we seek to draw a structured and comprehensive list of societal issues that the deployment of automatically processable regulation could entail. We do this by systematically exploring attributes of the law that are being challenged through its encoding and by taking stock of what issues current projects in this field raise. This article adds to the current literature not only by providing a needed framework to structure arising issues of computational law but also by bridging the gap between theoretical literature and practical implementation. Key findings of this article are: (1) The primary benefit (efficiency vs. accessibility) sought after when encoding law matters with respect to the issues such an endeavor triggers; (2) Specific characteristics of a project—project type, degree of mediation by computers, and potential for divergence of interests—each impact the overall number of societal issues arising from the implementation of automatically processable regulation.
The possibility of encoding regulation to make it processable automatically by computers has been gaining attention within the legal discipline. With it, an abundance of terms has emerged as much as an array of academic discussions providing different examples, raising different concerns, while, unfortunately, having different premises in mind. This makes contributions within the field of what we refer to as 'automatically processable regulation' difficult to compare with each other and research results hard to transfer among different research projects and groups. To overcome this problem, we propose a typology that enables researchers to locate their research project within the domain of automatically processable regulation, understand what issues might arise depending on where within the typology a project falls, and determine the relationship between projects. The typology revolves around three dimensions: the primary aim of the project, the potential for divergence of interests amongst stakeholders, and the degree of mediation by computers.
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