Recent Article on "Codelaw" By Gene Koo
I was just browsing an interesting new anthology, Rebooting America, which includes forty-four essays "brimming with the hopes of re-energizing, reorganizing, and reorienting our government for the Internet Age," and came across a name that should be familiar to some of you. Included in the volume is an essay by Gene Koo called "Creating Humane Codelaw," which pulls from his experience as a statewide website coordinator at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, where he "became aware of a computer system called Beacon used by the MA Department of Transitional Assistance (aka "welfare") to distribute various benefits such as food stamps to Massachusetts residents." Gene goes on to describe how "software that executes law ("codelaw") presents a number of challenges to a democracy," and provide some ideas about how to ensure that codelaw "remains accountable to the people." Also included in the anthology are essays by Yochai Benkler, Newt Gingrich, Craig Newmark, Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, and David Weinberger. -M
