"Code is Law", as @lessig famously said. But for a decade now, people like myself, @balajis, @paulmromer and Tom Bell have been pointing out that Law is Code too: laws are lists of procedural instructions executed by judges and arbitrators as the CPUs.
We amend laws like we patch code; we comment on them, copy them, propose rewrites in the form of Model Codes, have APIs like the UCC (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_C…), even cross-language APIs (treaties), and we search for opinions on @LexisNexis just like usage examples on @github.
I'm not saying laws are exactly like code or that human law is superior to machine law - I'm sympathetic to @NickSzabo4's eloquent critiques of "human-interpreted wet code" (). But there's enough similarity to mine coding practices for legal insights.
So I feel strongly that law should be more fully open-sourced: modularized, forkable, diffable, OSS licensed, kept in searchable repositories along with open (not gated) databases of rulings, and incorporated via reference into city, county, province, and country codes.
San Francisco voters should be able to propose a ballot initiative to adopt Houston's pro-housing growth codes v 2.3, along with specified patch us-ca-2018-11.01 to adapt the codes to match the "API" of the other city & county codes & the CA state constitution.
Colorado voters (aided by @jaredpolis) should be able to adopt Portugal's harm-reduction drug legalization; or a @BlueFrontiers seastead to use @delaware_gov's corporate law. Laws can & should be remixed, refactored, and reused for diversity and constant innovation.
As @mattwridley so brilliantly said at TED: the engine of human progress and prosperity has been ideas having sex (ted.com/talks/matt_rid…). And laws are ideas. So just imagine the prosperity that could be unleashed if laws evolved at Silicon Valley speed.
That's why I'm so excited that @StartSocieties (on whose board I serve) is creating ULEX, the first open-source legal system (and it's supporting infrastructure). As appropriate for an OSS project, we're crowdfunding it, so please consider donating: indiegogo.com/projects/ulex-…
