A Normal Form for Representing Legal Norms and its Visualisation Through Normative Diagrams

Abstract

Representing legal norms by means of an adequate formalism is essential for the development of legally compliant autonomous systems. The remarkable variety of both formalisation and implementation frameworks proposed during the last decades enables the development of relatively efficient formalisations over a wide range of applications. Notwithstanding, this abundance of frameworks also leads to some practical problems, especially with respect to the integration of – or the translation between – different frameworks. While more or less widely applicable meta-formalisms are already available, they are often too complex and counter-intuitive, thus being clearly closer to the technical implementation than to the conception phase of the formalisation process. As a complementary, more human-oriented solution to the problem, the paper at hand introduces and discusses a more intuitive normal form structure, which is based on elements of legal theory and aims at facilitating the interdisciplinary communication among the many partners involved in the process of developing law-abiding machines.