Project Summary
Legal and regulatory processes are becoming increasingly automated. A number of Australian Government-led initiatives are seeking to convert Commonwealth legislation into machine-readable formats. The coded legislation would then be used to enhance public accessibility to Commonwealth laws and to provide a stimulus for further technical innovations, particularly regarding compliance management of existing Commonwealth legal regimes. However, the conversion of Commonwealth legislation into machine readable code will give rise to significant interpretive challenges, especially relating to the application of existing principles and established processes of statutory interpretation. This project will develop a classification framework to identify the challenges that arise from the conversion of Commonwealth legislation into machine-readable code. The framework will then be used to examine the parameters of coding capabilities, based on the application of processes of formal logic, in conjunction with legal principles and processes of statutory interpretation.
Project team
Investigators
- Professor Nicolas Suzor
- Associate Professor Anna Huggins
- Associate Professor Mark Burdon
- Dr Alice Witt
Project Outputs
Research Publications
- Burdon, Mark, Huggins, Anna, Godfrey, Nicholas, Buckley, Joshua, & Simcock, Rhyle (2021) Coding of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Design and Distribution Obligations and Product Intervention Powers) Act 2019 (Cth) (The DDO Act): Interim Report.
- Huggins, Anna, Burdon, Mark, Witt, Alice, & Suzor, Nicolas (2021) Digitising Legislation: Connecting Regulatory Mind-Sets and Constitutional Values. Law, Innovation and Technology. (In Press)
- Witt, Alice, Huggins, Anna, Governatori, Guido, & Buckley, Joshua (2021) Converting copyright legislation into machine-executable code: interpretation, coding validation and legal alignment. In ICAIL ’21: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), United States of America, 139–148.
Submissions
- Huggins, Anna, Simcock, Rhyle, & Hackney, Oliver (2022) Digital Media Research Centre Issues Paper Submission: Positioning Australia as a Leader in Digital Economy Regulation – Automated Decision Making and AI Regulation. (Unpublished)
Project funding
- CSIRO’s Data61 (2020-2021)
