Exploiting Aptus.AI’s Artificial Intelligence technology, we identified several inconsistencies within legal documents available on institutional platforms, but the solution already exists: our machine-readable regulatory format
“Equal justice under law”. Everyone said it at least once. It is a kind of axiom on which our society is based, a certainty that all citizens share and, above all, a requirement for the law itself to have some effectiveness.
But what would you think if we told you that there are some regulations whose content is not unequivocal? How could the law be “equal for all” in the absence of a consistent, reliable and up-to-date version of each regulatory document?
Although it may seem incredible, on several occasions we have encountered mistakes, or at least inconsistencies, contained in the legal documents available on institutional channels commonly used by those who need to analyze the law in Italy, such as Normattiva website, at national level, and EUR-Lex portal in the European Union context. And we were able to identify them only thanks to Aptus.AI’s proprietary technology.
A first example is the Legislative Decree 11 of 27 January 2010, which, on Normattiva, contains a sanction that does not refer to any obligation present within our system.
Thus, the violation of one of its mandatory norms is excluded from the sanctioned behavior. In art. 25-bis, the intention was to penalise paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 but a mistake has been made.
Therefore, currently (and for more than 6 years so far), those who do not fully comply with paragraph 2 are not punished by an administrative fine of 30.000 euros up to 5 million euros or up to 10% of turnover.
Another similar case is contained in the Decree 642 of 1972, the text concerning stamp duty. During an analysis of the sanctions and their impact on the obligations contained in the source within Aptus, we came across art. 25 paragraph 3 of this decree, in which the sanction identifies two main norms, namely the fifth and last paragraph of art. 15.
Considering that documents were written by typewriter in 1972, we counted the paragraphs manually and realized that paragraph 3 of art. 25, from which we started, refers to the fifth and last paragraph of art. 15. Although paragraph 5 is actually inherent to the omission of a declaration, the last paragraph is not, since it refers to a later time, namely the liquidation (payment of tax). The declaration is instead the subject of the preceding paragraph. This type of inconsistency in a document is called “material error”, that is a mistake related to the writing of the document. To verify the origin of the mistake, we checked directly on Normattiva, which reports the regulation exactly as in Aptus.
In light of this, we have assumed that there was a point where art. 15 was amended (by adding a sentence), but without updating the reference in art. 25. Actually, however, the regulation was published in 1972 exactly like it looks now and it has never been amended nor an article has ever been modified at the textual level. Where did the mistake come from then?
Going back to the original version, namely the text published in the Official Journal in 1972, we analyzed the scan of Decree 642 and, scrolling down to art. 25, we found that the missing paragraph is caused by a “false” newline in the original text, simply due to the fact that the previous line was finished, sending the text to a new line, but without indenting it. Consequently, the last paragraph – which includes both the part relating to the declaration and that relating to liquidation (last period of the last paragraph) – is in fact formed by those who, on Normattiva, are considered as two paragraphs.
Such an incongruity may seem unremarkable, but it actually has a huge impact on legal certainty – which should apply to all citizens -, since it shows that Normattiva, an institutional channel for regulatory consultation, is not entirely reliable. In this context, it is appropriate to specify that Normattiva does not have legal value, given that the official source is the Official Journal, but, considering the concept of “legitimate expectation”, it is legit to rely on what is written in the official channels of the administration.
Mistakes and inconsistencies of this kind within regulatory documents are obviously to be avoided in order to ensure legal certainty and compliance with the law. But how can they be avoided? For sure by adopting Aptus.AI’s machine-readable format. The integration of a digital and machine-readable version of legal documents within the regulatory enactment process would facilitate interaction between Regulators, law, citizens and organizations, creating a virtuous circle between the expression of regulations and the transposition of the regulatory obligations they entail. And the adoption of this technology will therefore bring benefits to:
- regulatory bodies, thanks to greater effectiveness in communicating new regulations;
- professionals and organizations operating in the compliance and in the legal sectors, by facilitating consultation and compliance to regulatory updates, as well as access to advanced services for a better understanding of regulatory risks and opportunities;
- citizens, guaranteeing them greater accessibility to the law, therefore greater awareness of their rights and duties-
To sum up, by integrating our machine-readable format into the process of drafting and issuing regulatory texts, it would be possible to exploit Aptus.AI’s Artificial Intelligence not only to optimize regulatory analysis, but also to avoid potential inconsistencies within legal documents themselves, thus ensuring legal certainty and fostering compliance.
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