I’m in the middle of the transition back to straight legal work, signified by a functioning desktop computer and a fetching new lunch sack. Thus far my assignments have been fairly simple, primarily document review, but my ongoing engagement with the tech world here in Portland has irrevocably changed the way I view such documents. Now, I can only see them as code.
When you read a programming manual, For Dummies or not, it typically states a set of design principles. Among these is the notion that code should flow cleanly, be organized, and to the extent that it is possible, tell the story of what’s going to happen if I compile the program. A contract is fundamentally no different, except the machine you’re compiling the program on is usually a court of law, regulatory schema, or (often) another body of code, like a default statutory scheme. The contract receives inputs and outputs results according to the scheme.
Obviously, the impact of a bug in a contract can have just as large a set of ramifications for everyone involved – you’re asking the courts to provide tech support. Not a good plan. And, just like programming languages, legalese can produce, promote, and sustain fictions (see, for example, Enron). The more creative the mind behind the code, the bigger the lie you can perpetuate. In programming, that equals awesome game experience. In law, often not as cool. On the other hand, the same capacity to exist in PretendTown allows you to duck some of the more egregious chunks of the American legal system. Creative Commons is, after all, nothing more than contracting around copyright law.
I think the metaphor has legs and want to try to document some examples as the year unfolds. If you’re a coder and want to contribute some particularly “narrative” code, I’ll try to come up with a complementary example in the world of legal drafting. In the meantime, let us all keep our code (and hands) squeaky clean.
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January 9, 2009 at 5:58 pm »
Outstanding analogy. My comment ended up becoming longer than your original post (and not because I channel James Mitchner whenever I write!). It’s being re-blogged on Positively Glorious!, where I will add my thoughts and spread your wonderful analogy farther and wider. Great thoughts. I’ll see what code I can dig up for you.
January 9, 2009 at 7:02 pm »
[...] In possibly the most unexpected analogy ever, Jean-Paul Voillequé, in an attempt to become universally hailed as Portland’s geekiest lawyer, gives un an interesting link between coding and law: [...]
January 10, 2009 at 12:54 am »
Brilliant! Analogies like these helps us understand topics and ideas. While quite far-fetched, my hypothesis is that, to truly be internalized into culture, a machine language should be both thought and taught as a human language.
January 11, 2009 at 12:43 am »
That’s a good insight, but it is no a metaphor. It’s truer than that. There is a direct and deep correlation and a fundamental reason for it. I’ve had a blog post on a related topic floating around in my head for quite some time which may explain this more, if indirectly. I’m just having trouble getting words on screen. But you’ve motivated me to try.