Just from a Natural Language perspective, this is amazing. By using the code as as a corpus, we can see how differently legal language differs from day-to-day parlance. Such an analysis might be fascinating, especially if we compare to word frequency in Google Ngram's historical index. I suspect legal language trails several decades behind modern lingo.
Semi-intelligent queries can be executed, such that ignorance of the law might be abated. Imagine saying "Siri, is it illegal to do X?" and Siri answering you. This is important, because of the "Three Felonies a Day" syndrome with unwitting violations of the law. http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...
There is a company that is doing something somewhat related and equally cool. They use NLP to identify who may have written particular portions of bills.
http://www.legcyte.com/
The law can be interpreted as a set of rules matched against an action in a particular context to determine whether said action is legal.
Right now lots of people do this manually.
Maybe computers can do it better.
If computers can do it better, maybe people could focus on writing new laws and refactoring old ones instead of repeatedly interpreting old laws for each case.
Yup, legal code isn't that different from computer code where a judge is the interpreter and evidence is fed as input.
If we could invent a computer interpreter that acts as a judge, laws and contracts being its code might make it obvious to lawyers why it doesn't make sense to allow code to be patented.
Every time lawyers would write laws or contracts they would have to avoid using legal ideas that have already been patented subjecting them to the same legal difficulties software developers face every time they write code.
You could also add in EDGAR data that touches the laws to make estimates on the way the judiciary would interpet a certain action. It could also be used to find loopholes, conviction-free zones near boundaries in the law that could be closed.
Semi-intelligent queries can be executed, such that ignorance of the law might be abated. Imagine saying "Siri, is it illegal to do X?" and Siri answering you. This is important, because of the "Three Felonies a Day" syndrome with unwitting violations of the law. http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...