Results

To create a theoretical and empirical legal-techno framework to define in an official and authoritative manner the legal norms formalized in machine- consumable (e.g. coding law, XML, logic formula, smart contract) with the same legal value of the natural language text that for centuries constituted the legal systems. Equal attention should be dedicated:

1. to evaluating the ex-ante and ex-post Regulatory Impact Assessment using measurement indicators, to simplify and coordinate the legislation agenda (“Better regulation” ),

2. to monitoring the checking compliance of implementations and to rapidly updating the internal rules – the so-called interna corporis - to connect text-rules-code with accuracy and to adequate the lifecycle processes to updated legal system orders;

3. to communicating with citizens, companies, institutions, public administrations in transparent manner and make the legal-tech scenario trustworthy avoiding the black- box effect, using simplification principles and legal design visualization without affecting transparency and accountability.

Some scholars have shed considerable light on the fact that the widespread use of images in the everyday life phase ought to lead to consider the inclusion of images in legal practice. Indeed, images could contribute to a better representation of the intention of the lawmaker. We are facing a systematic implementation of the graphic communication in the legal field. This project aims to identify the potential of future legal engineering within the idea of legal drafting. It also aims to explore how innovations in technology and shifts in communication paradigms and social structures influence the form of legal communication. In particular, we will examine new perspectives offered by “legal design”, for example by exploiting the potential offered by graphic representations (such as icons, graphs or comics, for instance) and testing their limits. We are part of the EU IT Law by Design Jean Monnet (2018-2020) and EU-DRAWS Jean Monnet (2022-2024) led by prof. Aleain Strowel, UCLouvain, and by dr. Rossana Ducato. This project can provide relevant material for training in this domain with a robust theoretical framework.

It is urgent to make legal and ethical norms machine-consumable, and not simply machine-readable in order to promptly react to relevant changes, to correctly apply regulations to changed scenarios, to allow machine-to-machine dialogue with digital artefacts (e.g. IoT, Smart Cities, Transportation sector), to analyse the results and to take quick decisions for enhancing economy and the social community. If Parliaments define and adopt a theoretically-informed framework of the “Law as Platform”, government institutions and public administrations can save a significant amount of time in the implementation, avoiding a reasonable percentage of errors, monitoring the effects of the legal norms, correct unsuccessful prescriptions, develop integrated ecosystems with the digital infosphere entities and prepare the future interaction with robots, multi-agents, AI, blockchains, smart contracts. AI systems can also support legislative law-making in the deliberative phase and help produce better regulation avoiding mistakes and inconsistency. This approach saves companies’ money, reduces lawsuits and litigations, makes the compliance with the rule of law system more effective.

The framework of SLOTS will be capable of managing the flow of the process from the legal text to the program coding and, vice versa, from the formalization in rules to the natural language of official legal normative text. Philosophy of law and constitutional law principles will be implemented by-design. A technical security level will maintain each step tracked (e.g. blockchain, digital signature, trust service) and connected with the others to certify the legal validity of the whole process (process-oriented model). In the meantime, the framework will have a user-centred interface for managing dialogue.
The whole framework will have different levels of versioning: versions over time; multilingualism variants; different alternatives of interpretation (Boella, Rotolo, Sartor). The FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Record) model of digital artefacts helps to manage the dynamicity of the legal sources under such multi-level perspectives (versions/variants/alternatives).

A crucial problem is to provide also a persistent Unique Resource Identifier of the Legal Sources in the Web space to allow digital objects to be referable for generations, similarly to Middle-Age manuscripts which stood out for centuries. Can we preserve the normative characteristics of the Law when it is digitalized and formalized in a neutral manner which respects its contingent and specific implementation (e.g. using a particular programming language) or the media available (e.g. virtual reality)? How do digital media transform the message of the Law? and how to preserve the autonomy of the legal normative function when it is digitalized for machine-consumable purposes? What is the role of technology in this transformation and what effects could it produce in the long-term?
We intend to minimize the dependency from a specific current technology and to digitalize the norms in canonical, interoperable, independent ways. In the meantime, we want to take the great opportunities that this approach can offer (e.g. checking compliance, rapid analysis of the modifications, legal reasoning).

Most legal systems are affected by some fragmentation of legal sources (e.g. international, European, national, regional levels, authority level), with issues related to their overproduction (e.g. secondary/subsidiary law), the evolution of sovereignty (e.g. Brexit) and, in the meantime, pressing demands coming from fluid democracy and a hyperconnected society. On the one hand there is the risk that other more agile forms of Legal Sources could arise (e.g. BitTech Law), on the other hand different formats of regulation of society are adopted in practice (e.g. distributed rules, smart contracts) with detrimental effects on the role of Institutions if they are not designed well.

It is a ground-breaking project that requires a long-term commitment to create a new legal theory of the e-legal system first and a technical framework accordingly. It is an urgent task in the current digital society and knowledge society. Otherwise, simplistic solutions arise, often promoted by Big Tech or private companies eroding the Democratic System pillars, the Rule of Law core-concepts, the Institution’s authority.

We intend to rely on the international community and network set up with the “Law, Science and Technology” (LAST-JD) international PhD programme (MSCA-ITN 814177) that involves more than 30 bodies, academic institutions, research centres and industrial partners. The LAST-JD is an interdisciplinary PhD programme that has now about 60 fellows or awarded scholars. It is the largest PhD initiative funded by the EU commission in the history of legal informatics. MIREL network is another important international community that also involves Japan, China, South Africa, Australia partners. Moreover, the IAAIL (International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law) can be involved in order to contribute to the debate of the project. Europe can lead the interest in researching these topics by playing a primary role, a necessity particularly noted in this moment, when de facto normative rules are firmly in the hands by the Big Tech actors. We have presented an ERC in the Horizon 2021-2027 funding programme and the ERC passed the first selection for the second time. So we intend to use this PRIN for developing this valuable project and to reach high-level goals. Additionally, there is great interest at the Government level in improving the legislative quality, simplification and effectiveness in the "Unit for Rationalization and Improvement of Regulation and Office for Simplification" set up for coping with the PNRR goals.