Jusletter IT

One of the central questions around which divisions in the field of computers and law have been built over the past three decades has been that of just where codification of legal materials might be able to transform the humble document into something more meaningful – allowing easier understanding and transmission of legal knowledge. There have been many attempts made to utilise, for example, various versions of logic to carry out this task, but none have to date been successful. Schweighofer has been one of those who has followed this path but has also used other non-logical approaches to try to extract and then encode meaning from text. He has carried out this work in a manner which perhaps better reflects the complexity of the legislating, advising and adjudicating processes than some of the more legally naïve researchers who have too often had little appreciation of the lawyer’s mindset. In this paper I look to see whether there are ideas which can be taken and re-used from Schweighofer which might enable better transmission of law whilst ignoring his demand of a logical basis for that transmission. In effect I am interested in what Schweighofer has to say to those with a sociological approach to law who view technology as a possible aid to the dissemination of legal knowledge.