Indeterminacy of Legal Language as a Guide Towards Ideally Algorithmisable Areas of Law

Abstract

This article delves into the relationship between language in law and the automation of legal decision-making processes. The conflict arises between the indeterminate language of the law and the necessary precision of algorithmic language, where the first needs to be translated into the other during the process of automation. The article seeks to provide definitions as well as the necessary excursion into the role of indeterminacy in the legal language to be able to shed a light on this process. In this regard, the article examines several problematic examples of the currently utilised algorithmic systems in legal decision-making. Subsequently, the article sets forth its thesis: that indeterminate language used within legal rules sets out the perimeter for areas suitable for the process of automation, determined by the very nature of such areas of law as a negative demarcation. Lastly, it provides language-based positive demarcations for such areas. Further, by examining the theory of legal indeterminacy, the article shows that the conclusion does not in fact lie in the technical impossibility of creating an indetermined algorithm, but rather in the very purpose of such language – that of mandating a value judgement. The conclusion of this article thus seeks to be technologically neutral by providing a different route of the purpose examination to reach it, rather than technological impossibility, which may change in time.