Legal Engineering: Methodology for Designing Trustworthy Social Systems

Abstract

Our society is regulated by a lot of laws and rules which are related mutually. When we view a society as a system, laws and rules can be viewed as the specifications for the society. Such a systemic aspect of laws and rules have not been studied well so far. In the upcoming e-Society, laws and rules have more important roles in order to achieve a trustworthy society and we expect a methodology which treats a systemic aspect of laws and rules. Legal Engineering is a new field which studies the methodology and applies information science and software engineering to laws and rules in order to support legislation and to implement laws and rules using computers. This paper introduces the purpose and the approach of Legal Engineering, problems which should be solved, and legal structure analysis, which has an important role in Legal Engineering.