iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Looks like a great development, Jason. Hope you’ll do an explainer demo video for it.

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Thanks to my former colleague Andreas Källberg who drew my attention to the fact that s(CASP) answers were a form of partial evaluation in early 2021. And to @mattwadd.bsky.social whose unwavering appreciation for propositional logic flowcharts was the inspiration for what to do with that fact.

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

§Blawx generates multiple answers, and multiple explanations for each answer, each as a constrained tree justification. What if it was possible to take a bunch of those trees and combine them into a ternary flowchart diagram to allow you to explore them interactively? #RulesAsCode #LegalTech

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Computer-Readable Legislation Project @crlp-jerseyldo.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Latest newsletter out digitallegislation.substack.com/p/news-from-... - testing AI "skills" for reading legislation - free web course for legislative drafters - capturing logic of multiple layers of definitions, qualifications & exclusions - EU govts open-source coding systems for RaC - Oz & NZ news

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I see a lot of people here dunking on a software dev who thinks that law is code. As a person who ought to know (grad degree in computational law), let me point out two things that can be true at the same time: 1. Laws are not code. 2. Interpretations of law can be encoded. 1/

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Mathieu Carpentier @mathieucarpentier.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Susan Haack, a leading epistemologist and philosopher of logic, passed away yesterday. Sit ei terra levis news.miami.edu/as/stories/2...

news.miami.edu

Susan Haack

Professor Susan Haack passed away on March 10, 2026, in Miami, Florida.

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Computer-Readable Legislation Project @crlp-jerseyldo.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Our report (statesassembly.je/getmedia/ade... or osf.io/m4che) is out on our last 3 years of work - * Logic visualiser * definitions tool * AI * non-tech drafting guidance * Docassemble mock-up Plus background on legislative drafting, RaC, ADM & more. Has a 4-page summary (or 1-page at osf.io/5ne3c)

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

New release of §Blawx tonight, v2.0.2, that fixes a small bug with NLG in explanations. Also, a blog post that illustrates how #RulesAsCode can be used in software development by exposing symbolic AI encodings to developers' agents over MCP. app.blawx.dev/content/usin... #LegalTech

A screen shot of a chat with ChatGPT 5.2 inside the GitHub CoPilot extension for VS Code, in which the agent is using a Blawx encoding to explain why a given output is expected in a given fact scenario that has to do with procurement rules in the Government. Ultimately, the agent replies "From the Blawx run of question id 59 ("is there a violation with regard to a contract") using facts that match your scenario, the reasoner produces a proof tree showing a violation because DMP Section 4.6 / 4.6.1 / 4.6.1.1 requires Treasury Board approval when the estimated value exceeds the entity's non-competitive basic contracting limit, and that approval must occur before the contract is entered into."

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Blawx is officially no longer "pre-revenue"! 🎉 Big milestone! But more excited to hear about lawyers having fun using it. Did I make legal knowledge engineering fun for lawyers? Not really. It was always fun. Blawx just makes it easier to learn! 😅 #RulesAsCode #LegalTech

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Computer-Readable Legislation Project @crlp-jerseyldo.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Very useful & interesting couple of days at LVI2025, Law via the Internet conf www.lvi2025.org/program/ - "Shaping the Future of Legal Accessibility: Improving access to law through legal info, tech & AI” in Sydney at AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute www.austlii.edu.au/about.html)

lvi2025.org

LVI 2025: Program & Speakers | Law via the Internet Conference 12-14 November 2025

Connect with a diverse international community of legal professionals, technologists, policymakers, and researchers.

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ILPA @ilpaimmigration.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

📢 We're recruiting! We're looking for a Legal Project Officer to join our team. ⏰Apply by Monday 24 November 2025. More details 👇 ilpa.org.uk/legal-projec... 🙏 Please share widely 🙏

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Public Law Project @publiclawproject.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

🔔 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞: 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐚𝐰𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 📅 4, 6, 11 & 14 Nov | Zoom 4 webinars for decision-makers! In partnership with @legalactiongroup.bsky.social & @39essexchambers.bsky.social. Book now: shorturl.pulse.ly/mltceu8krj

shorturl.pulse.ly

Getting it right first time: Making lawful decisions

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Computer-Readable Legislation Project @crlp-jerseyldo.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Very encouraging to see "Public sector automated decision-making" will be one of new projects at Law Commission (E&W) lawcom.gov.uk/news/law-com... We published Margaux McQuilton's pre-print report on ADM osf.io/a7jwc We see logic-driven systems taking human decision-makers to the right questions

lawcom.gov.uk

Law Commission Launches 14th Programme of Law Reform – Law Commission

Reforming the law

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Joelle Grogan @joellegrogan.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Looking for a really simple explainer? The #ECHR and #HRA on post-it notes.

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Arthur C. Clerk's Mysterious World @fantasticlife.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

In which we bid farewell to Professor Michael Rush. A kind, generous and gentle man. More notes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I: ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

ukparliament.github.io

2025 - Week 36

Work in progress to design data models for UK Parliament

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Scott Wortley @scottwortley.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

the professionalisation of legislative drafting (only 150 years or so in the UK) and the unlikely nature of any oversight. Implied repeal is an argument of last resort. If made it indicates someone has no real arguments. Hard to identify the last time such an argument was successful.

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

This is the first time I have seen L4 running in the wild, which is exciting. I have some thoughts...

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Very sorry you see it that way. I can only repeat that I don't see what we're doing as in any way at all taking away from what you (or others) are doing - it isn't either/or. I do want benefits beyond better drafting - to me it seems sensible to push towards that on different fronts at the same time

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

I would like to have a call with you &/or Martin if you have some time, ideally before the RaC Guild - I'm sure it would be more useful than talking across each other on here. What do you reckon?

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

We are not trying to teach drafters any of the full systems - I will leave that to you (& Martin P) for Blawx, & the Legalese team for L4, & whoever for whatever. We are trying to do something different, which really doesn't clash with any of what anyone else is doing. We're all on the same side???

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

I am saying that to introduce many drafters, on their territory, to what this can do for drafting, it is a good idea to do that with propositional. We have not found anyone to do that for us, but the L4 guys were prepared to let us hobble their system and we leapt at that.

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Seems like I am still not getting this across - I absolutely am not saying you have to use our approach to learn L4 - and I really am not interested in any point-scoring between Blawx, L4, Logical English, Catala or whoever.

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

I do have the interest, but many people need intermediate steps. Also not sure what you mean on alternative tool - we both know no tool could automatically reliably convert real legislative text into code/logic, even just propositional. Getting drafters to analyse their text is a key purpose for us

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

For the next step I don’t necessarily mean flowcharts. Just a simple way to go from the text to something that captures something beyond propositional and can then show that something can be done with it. Stepping stones for some people, jump straight into learning full Blawx/L4/etc for others

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

By the way my next mad plan is to look into what would be the simplest minimum we could add to produce a marginally less hobbled (but still brazenly hobbled) version that takes us a minimum step beyond propositional into the shallowest & most drafter-friendly end of predicate. If that sinks so be it

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Do bear in mind this is us jumping on one tool they had produced, and us asking them to help us hobble it back down to just propositional logic, for our purposes. I would love to persuade you (or Martin P) to help us do an equivalent with Blawx too - could you be open to discussing that?

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

We are also presenting this to drafters as worth the small effort partly because it improves drafting, by helping drafters to think yet more rigorously about what they are doing. Again this opens the door to seeing scope for further improvements in drafting too.

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

I honestly don’t think it will obscure anything. Visualising is an impactful way to get people started, & this starts from where legislative drafters are. Once you have them over that hill it is far easier for them to picture the potential benefits of a more sophisticated system.

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

I really don’t think it’s an either-or. I see this as part of helping to get more of one specific audience to start down a road that could then just as easily take them to Blawx as anywhere else. Will you be at RaC Guild on 3 Sept to see us? Maybe talk before?

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Arthur C. Clerk's Mysterious World @fantasticlife.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

A wee bank holiday treat for you guys. More week - well, fortnight - notes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I. In which we approached ramming speed, only to collide head-on with documentation buffers. Rescued in part by the kindness of strangers ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

ukparliament.github.io

2025 - Week 34

Work in progress to design data models for UK Parliament

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Thanks Jason - the point of the propositional approach is to give legislative drafters, with no tech experience, an easy & familiar way in to seeing what we mean by capturing the logic and what that can deliver. So all your points are valid but we are trying to do something else

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Here are some results from our work with the L4 team at SMU - getting legislative drafters to produce basic visualisations by showing how to make propositional logic versions of their drafts #RulesAsCode

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

If we needed new draft legislation to criminalise burglary, surely it shouldn’t fail the tests just because we know some people will still burgle, or even because some police forces will not investigate and deter? Or is this just me not really knowing what test-driven means?

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

We might. But this one doesn’t look like a problem with the drafting, which requires “highly effective” age measures & tells OFCOM to give guidance. Isn’t this about either providers not following OFCOM or OFCOM’s guidance being too lax? Or policy wrongly assuming affordable effective tools exist??

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Jason Morris @lexpedite.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

The last day of ICAIL had a lot of papers directly relevant to #RulesAsCode, and at least three papers about getting LLMs to do the encoding. A lot of unanswered questions, still, but it seems like some of the design choices I made about Blawx v2 to help codegen were well founded.

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Natural Legal Language Processing (NLLP) Workshop @nllpworkshop.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

☀️ We’re here too - getting ready for the 7th NLLP workshop (8/Nov @emnlpmeeting.bsky.social ) 🚀✨ The updated Call for Papers is coming soon — stay tuned! 📣📄 💙 Follow us & spread the word about NLLP🌍💬 🔗 Keep an eye on the website for updates! 🖥️🔍 nllpw.org/workshop/ #NLLP #legaltech #nlproc #nlp

nllpw.org

NLLP Workshop 2025

The seventh workshop on Natural Legal Language Processing (NLLP 2025) explores methods and applications of Natural Language Processing for the Legal Domain by focusing on legal text and text with lega...

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

You mean as in encoding - L4, DataLex, Blawx, Catala, LegalRuleML, AkomaNtoso etc? Not as in Napoleonic codification?

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Edinburgh Legal Theory @legaltheoryed.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

This afternoon we will host a Work-in-Progress session with visiting PhD candidate Filipa Paes (University of Oxford), who will be presenting a paper on ‘Juridical Bivalence’. The event is pre-read, so make sure to get in touch if you’d like to receive a copy! www.law.ed.ac.uk/news-events/...

law.ed.ac.uk

WiP: Filipa Paes (University of Oxford) - ‘Juridical Bivalence’ | Edinburgh Law School

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

For those who don't have access to the final published version, there is now a free preprint version here osf.io/preprints/so...

osf.io

OSF

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

This is a really good interview with the fabulous Matt Lynch on Lawmaker - start with imagination not code, he says. modparl.substack.com/p/lawmaker

modparl.substack.com

Start With Imagination, Not Code

Lessons from Building a Shared Legislative Platform

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Arthur C. Clerk's Mysterious World @fantasticlife.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

A bank holiday treat for you all. More weeknotes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I. For some definition of ‘week’ ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

ukparliament.github.io

2025 - Week 18

Work in progress to design data models for UK Parliament

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Celebrating Liberation Day here in #JerseyCI. Very pleased to have bumped into @gillycarr.bsky.social leading historian of the Occupation. Work is under way to put on the web all of Jersey’s old legislation - that will help research into Occupation legislation & government, and postwar reaction.

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Statute Law Society @statutelawsociety.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

👋 A Statute Law Society Conference 'Legislation and the Constitution: Renton 50 Years On' Keynote speech by Lord Sales, Justice of the Supreme Court. ⏰ 6th June 2025 PLUS pre-conference lecture by Professor Jeremy Waldron 5th June 2025 For more information: www.statutelawsociety.co.uk/conference

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Ruth Fox @ruthfox.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

6/ The Bill - the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill - has now been published - 90 minutes before the debate in the Commons starts at 11am. Comprises 10 clauses over 5 pages of text. www.gov.uk/government/p...

gov.uk

Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Draft legislation to protect the UK steel industry.

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Arthur C. Clerk's Mysterious World @fantasticlife.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

We write prose and code to help us think. With the side benefit that the prose might be read, and the code might be read by a computer. Legislation as an interesting overlap?

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Resuming normal service - I also have a forthcoming chapter "Digitizing Legislation: Progress and Prospects" in the book "Legislating for Risk and Precaution: Bridging the Divide between Science and Law for Biosecurity" edited by Black, Moloney & Graffham www.routledge.com/Legislating-...

routledge.com

Legislating for Risk and Precaution: Bridging the Divide between Science and Law for Biosecurity

This book aims to demystify the law for scientists and instructing officials by exploring the science and legal concepts of risk and precaution for national legislation to facilitate safe trade in agr...

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Matthew Waddington @mattwadd.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

A break from digitising legislation- Out now, book chapter on Brexit's effects on UK/EU's constitutional/legal relations with Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man) & 14 last British Overseas Territories (incl Gibraltar & Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus) link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

link.springer.com

New Relationships for the Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories

Brexit’s effects were felt not just between the UK and EU but also had profound effects in other jurisdictions with special relationships to the UK. The Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and ...

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