M.A. Heather
B.N. Rossiter
University of Newcastle upon Tyne. 1994
Language and logic are fundamental to the representation of legal knowledge. Geometric logic is of current interest in theoretical computing science. Category theory provides a natural object-oriented approach to geometric logic appropriate to problems like environmental law where the long-term health of the inhabitants of the planet Earth depends critically on getting the law logically right. Progress achieved in local systems with artificial intelligence and with cognitive legal reasoning and with model logics now needs to be put together to achieve an integrable operating system for the Earth. This cannot mean a single simple global system but a constructive interoperability between all systems with consistency. This consistency can only come from a higher meta-level closure that can provide the necessary logical compatibility and integrity in the interaction between different sub-systems. The commutation of legal language and legal logic is discussed in the context of motor licensing to illustrate that category theory has the ability to combine diagrammatic formalisms as in geometry with symbolic notation as in algebra. This report 1 suggests that the categorial concept of adjointness identifies legal norms within pullbacks as the precompositional free functor f *.