Laws intent are often clarified in courts through judgments. If you can overlay the judgements on top of the corresponding law, at correct points in time, I think that will have value. It might, for example, show which laws were referenced the most and which needed to be clarified the most. It might give insights into what legal language constructs stood the test of time and which had to be repeatedly clarified.

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da_chicken 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's true, but it might not be as important here.

Spain is not a country with a Common Law legal system entirely like the US or the UK. They have a civil law system where prior court judgement does not form a strictly binding precedent. Prior judgements can be important, but case law is not really a thing.

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tephra 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I wonder how true this is, we have the same system in Sweden, that court judgement are not legally binding precedent for lower courts. But in practice lower courts will follow the rulings made by the high court.

Is it not the same in Spain at all?

	▲	philistine 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's the same in Spain, which makes OPs proposal kind of useless. The big distinction between a civil and a common law system is the fundamentals. A country's civil code is properly defined, while a common law's system is based on previous cases you have to dig through to find the basics.
	▲	amszmidt 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Would be nice if someone did it with Swedens laws too!

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dotancohen 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Laws are often cascaded as well. Specifically in this case, Spain is subdivided into Comunidades Autonomas - each have their own elected parliament. And inside those are cities with their own local laws.

So while this project does track laws, is there any facility to determine which laws from which bodies are relevant to a specific activity in a specific location?

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embedding-shape 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And inside those are cities with their own local laws.

No, cities don't have their own laws, but the autonomous communities do have some influence in some laws and regulations (not all), like the amount of income tax you have to pay and so on. But cities within the autonomous communities don't have their own laws.

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donalhunt 8 hours ago | parent [-]

No by(e)-laws in Spain? Certainly a thing in the UK, Ireland and I believe US and Canada. Is that a common law thing?

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Mordisquitos 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Local authorities in Spain do have the authority to enact their own law-ish regulations, which are called 'ordenanzas'. For example, if I remember correctly, motorbikes are allowed to park on the pavement by default in Barcelona unless a sign says otherwise, but it is forbidden in Madrid unless a sign explicitly allows it.

I think local government in Spain has at least as much authority as it does in the UK, maybe more, but almost certainly less than it does in the US.

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embedding-shape 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"By-laws" is typically the name of the rules/"laws" inside of a company or organization, I'm not familiar with that word in the context of "nation-wide criminal/civil laws".

Regardless, cities do not have their own "local laws" in the way your comment made it seem. We have national laws, and minor differences in various autonomous communities, since they have some legislative power to control their own industry, commerce, education and some more stuff.

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dylan604 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> inside of a company or organization,

Corps and cities are very similarly structured. Each are charted at the start, with corps getting governed by boards and c-suite types while cities have mayors and city council types. Both file paperwork to exist within the state. Both are subject to state laws, but are allowed to make up regulations specific to them as long as they are within the state's laws.

In the end, it's all just paperwork, at least in the US

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eep_social 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

as an american I might call those “local ordinance” when they come from a smaller rulemaker like a town

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ninalanyon 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> "By-laws" is typically the name of the rules/"laws" inside of a company

I suspect that this should be qualified by "in the US"

	▲	embedding-shape 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, I was talking about Spain, I have no idea how it works in the US. I thought mentioning "autonomous communities" was enough context to make it evident, but maybe it wasn't.

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Mordisquitos 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I may be wrong, but I think autonomous community legislation is not published in the BOE itself (the Official State Gazette), but rather in each of their corresponding official gazettes (e.g. DOGC for Catalonia, BOCM for Madrid, BOA for Aragon, BOJA for Andalusia, etc.).

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youknownothing 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

yes: Comunidades Autonomas can only defined laws as "permitted" by the central government under a Estatuto de Autonomia (Autonomy statute? not good with legal jargon), which is effectively a law of its own. So at the central level the law says "in this particularly region, matters of education are dealt with regionally", and then that's when regional laws apply. Same from local laws. In essence, all laws emanate from the central government, but the central government decides to delegate some areas; technically, they could always take it back.

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artirdx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another thought. Assuming such a dataset (laws+ judgement) could be built, an argument can be made to Parliament to draft new laws that take into account all those judgments and then mark those judgments and old laws in a way that they can no longer be referenced (archived?). This might simplify future cases leading to lower legal costs.

And who knows maybe a way could be found to create smart contracts (smart oracles? smart judges?) and those could lead to instant judgements.

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pseingatl 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rarely in a civil law jurisdiction, essential in common-law jurisdictions.

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SOLAR_FIELDS 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perhaps reference it in the commit trailer?