Morris, Jason Patrick
Abstract: The paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary experiment to investigate the effectiveness of Rules as Code as a method of improving legislative drafting, and whether s(CASP) is an appropriate tool for use in Rules as Code. Rules as Code, a computer-assisted legislative drafting methodology; and s(CASP), a stable-model constraint answer set programming language, are briefly introduced. The legal text encoded is also introduced. The paper describes the experimental method used, and provides a narrative of how s(CASP) was used in a simulated drafting task to find an inconsistency between the text and its anticipated behaviour. The researchers propose an amendment to resolve that inconsistency and the encoding is used to demonstrate that this amendment would resolve the drafting issue.The paper concludes that Rules as Code does have the potential to help reveal issues with legislative drafting, and that the s(CASP) programming language shows promise as a tool for that purpose.