Flowcharts and the Law

I've found that effective use of charts in communicating the law tend to be focused on process, rather than actual code. For instance, there is an excellent flowchart by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that maps out the process of the American Criminal Justice System. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/flowchart.htm

As to teaching the law, Ian Iredale has done some interesting work on this using .RTF (Rich Text Format) flowcharts with hyperlinks. He has some examples from Australian law, including the Law of Contract, Intellectual Property, Tax Equations, and the Legal Paradigm at http:// www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v9n3/iredale93nf.html

-- Russell Jurney (email), September 11, 2005

There seem to be two ways of looking at the law (and many other topics, for that matter).

One way of looking at it is as a continuing evolutionary process. So for example, to understand the laws around airline safety and immigration in the United States, you have to put it in the context of the security situation around that time - terrorism, reform of the intelligence services, and so on -. Landmark udicial decisions are also likely to have a big influence on current practice and on the code itself.

This is a great way to look at things if you work in social policy, or if you need to have a broad understanding of the legal situation without understanding the nitty-gritty. However, it won't tell you much about what you should do if you actually want to engage with the law - it's not a 'how-to' manual.

The other way of looking at it is in terms of an understanding of how it actually functions on a daily basis - what form you should fill in, what sort of action you should take, what appeals are open to you, and so on.

This is a good way to look at things if your purpose is to be directly engaged in operating the system, because it will guide you as to what your next action should be in most cases.

Of course, a really good specialist will know the system both ways. They know the context, but they also know the specifics of how to work the system. By combining these two types of knowledge, they will find innovative ways of using (and possibly abusing) the system.

Showing the 'bridge' between these two types of knowledge is the most challenging and interesting issue.

-- Antoin O Lachtnain (email), September 11, 2005

I think the key to briding the gap between these two kinds of knowledge is to get lawyers working on systems that base themselves on a visual representation of process that is sufficiently plastic to allow the expression of alternate strategies, the embedding of expert knowledge, etc. In time, through annotation, a system representing both kinds of knowledge will be born.