The Book · Chapter 3 of 28
Chapter 3Legal Translation into Computational Systems
How can a legal norm become operational in a system without its meaning, authority or exceptions being silently changed?
The chapter develops
The Legal Translation Problem, with the Translation Fidelity Requirement and the Competent Translation Requirement.
The Legal Translation Problem
Encoding law is an interpretive and institutional act.
Doctrine 2 of the Book’s twenty-one. A proposed formulation, not an enacted rule.
Summary
What changes when a legal norm becomes executable? This chapter treats translation into computational form as a sequence of legally consequential choices about source, meaning, facts, categories, procedure, discretion and effect. Reading the inherited administrative design alongside contemporary encoding practices, it follows the chain from authoritative source through institutional interpretation, specification, implementation and execution. The analysis distinguishes what translation can lose, including exceptions and the allocation of doubt, from what encoding adds through defaults, thresholds and priorities. It proposes a Translation Fidelity Requirement spanning six dimensions and a Competent Translation Requirement that matches approval to the normative significance of each choice. Technical research supplies comparisons rather than proof of legal legitimacy. The chapter accepts the benefits of precision and interdisciplinary co-drafting while arguing that neither removes the need for authority, a reviewable record and correction. Jurisdiction-specific competence and detailed traceability machinery remain for subsequent inquiry.
- Legal Translation Problem
- Translation Fidelity Requirement
- Competent Translation Requirement
- open texture
- operational amendment
- source pedigree
- Rules as Code
- translation record
How the chapter opens
JUS.automica
Legal Translation into Computational Systems
A legal rule becomes executable through accountable transformations; fidelity depends on who owns the choices between them.
- then
Source
Which legal text governs?
- then
Authoritative reading
Which meaning is adopted?
- then
Specification
Which facts, tests and exceptions?
- then
Implementation
How are those choices realised?
Execution
What happens in this case?
Each material choice
- An identified decision-maker
- A sufficient legal mandate
- An examinable record
Drafting, design and defence must keep these connections owned.
Reading the figure
Solid arrows show transformations, not a compulsory development sequence. The return route locates correction at the material choice; settled technical operations need not reopen interpretation.
Source: Chapter 3, sections 3.3.2 to 3.3.5.
The chapter text
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