Methodology

The methodology adopted is a hybrid approach that goes from theory to empirical validation and back, using different other methods like problem solving, Agile prototyping, brainstorming, co-design of the specifications of the technical solutions, focus-group with the end-users (e.g., Legal Drafting Services in Parliaments, ICT Gazette, Digital Agenda Government Department) and decision-makers (members of parliaments), law-by-design of the technical models. Normative and comparative analyses are also crucial to understand the current state of the art in this domain, in particular to evaluate the constitutional or parliamentary modifications.

This project uses interdisciplinary methods:

• legal studies: to create a robust theoretical constitutional framework that permits to use machine-consumable law while preserving the core meaning of democratic and “rule of law” principles;
• philosophy of law: to correctly include interpretation and epistezmic elements and to investigate the nature of legal concepts aiming to create legal ontology;
• semantics and linguistics: to correctly produce a simplification of the natural language in rules and symbolic codifications which maintain the equal expressivity of Legal Sources;
• legal informatics and logic: to represent the norms considering the defensibility logic necessary to model legal rules and to perform temporal legal reasoning;
• computer science: to use the best technologies of AI & Law, LegalXML standards, legal design, data analytics, neural networks, smart contract, visualization and usability.

Project co-founded by