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The Centre for Computational Law has merged with the Centre for AI and Data Governance to form the Centre for Digital Law. The new Centre examines the transformative impact of digital technologies on legal systems, government, society, and economy. Our research, including the Research Programme on Computational Law, continue under its ambit. Our current website will remain operational in this transitional period but we strongly encourage you to visit our new website at cdl.smu.edu.sg and explore the updated features and content. If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact our support team at cclawadmin@smu.edu.sg.

An End-to-End Pipeline from Law Text to Logical Formulas

This paper develops a pipeline for converting natural English law texts into logical formulas via a series of structural representations. The goal is to study how law-to-logic translation can be achieved with a sequence of well-defined steps. The texts are first parsed using a formal grammar derived from light-weight text annotations designed to minimise the need for manual grammar construction. An intermediate representation, called assembly logic, is then used for logical interpretation and supports translations to different back-end logics and visualisations. The approach, while rule-based and explainable, is also robust: it can deliver useful results from day one, but allows subsequent refinements and variations. While some work is needed to extend the method to new laws, the software presented here reduces the marginal effort necessary. As a case study, we demonstrate our approach on one part of Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act. Our code is available open-source.

Associated People

Aarne Ranta
Senior Research Scientist – Computational Linguistics
Inari Listenmaa
Deputy Director, Assistant Professor of Law
Jerrold Soh
Principal Investigator
Wong Meng Weng