Program Transparency for Legal Machines

Abstract

This paper attempts to define the transparency problem. The context is the changeover from a text culture to a machine culture in law. The paradigm change to electronic procedures reveals new contexts for justice. Note that equal access to e-procedures does not guarantee justice. The transparency of the law leads to the transparency of programs. We formulate two requirements for legal machines: 1) the architecture of the program must be made accessible; and 2) the program must provide legal protection. The implementation of these requirements is a subject for software engineering. A need therefore arises for the requirements to flow down to lower level specifications. In the end we define program transparency as a compliance problem.