Theoretical and Legal Characteristics of Machine-Readable Law

The idea of automating law and legal activity has become increasingly popular in the scientific legal environment in recent years. One of the ways of such automation is to transform legislation into a machine-readable form. This could provide the possibility of automatic application of the law, increase legal certainty, and make the law accessible to the user. The adoption in 2021 of the Concept for the Development of Machine-Readable Law Technologies became one of important steps towards the introduction of machine-readable law in Russia. It seems that for the successful development of this area, we need a comprehensive theoretical and legal understanding of a new phenomenon for the domestic legal theory, namely: machine-readable law. Using formal logical methods, the author gives a definition of machine-readable law based on the essential and necessary features of the phenomenon under consideration. The paper provides a list of mandatory and optional features of machine-readable law. Special attention is paid to the issues of algorithmization of law and the use of legal ontologies. The paper highlights the main consequences of machine-readable law relating both to the law-making stage and to the stage of using machine-readable law. Such consequences include various types of testability of machine-readable law, the possibility of automatic interpretation, enforcement and direct implementation of machine-readable legal regulations. The author provides the concept of machine-readable law in the broadest sense of the word, covering not only legal regulations, but also the content of smart contracts, machine-readable powers of attorney. The paper also deals with the issues of machine-executable law and the related transition from legal normativity to technological normativity. This work contributes to the theoretical and legal understanding of machine-readable law and can contribute to its successful development in Russia.

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