Law Smells - Artificial Intelligence and Law

In modern societies, law is one of the main tools to regulate human activities. These activities are constantly changing, and law co-evolves with them. In the past decades, human activities have become increasingly differentiated and intertwined, e.g., in developments described as globalization or digitization. Consequently, legal rules, too, have grown more complex, and statutes and regulations have increased in volume, interconnectivity, and hierarchical structure (Katz et al. 2020; Coupette et al. 2021a). A similar trend can be observed in software engineering, albeit on a much shorter time scale.