Computable·Authority
← Module 6 · The Future of Authority

Lecture 6.3

The Standards Landscape

Computable authority is not the first attempt to make law machine-tractable, and it does not replace the work that exists. This lecture situates it against Akoma Ntoso, LegalRuleML, Catala, the Rules-as-Code movement, and the emerging work on agent identity — what each does well, and the specific gap computable authority is aimed at.

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Learning objectives

After this lesson, the reader should understand:

  • 01Describe the purpose and maturity of the main Law-as-Code standards.
  • 02State, for each, what it establishes and what it leaves outside its scope.
  • 03Position computable authority as a complementary layer, not a competitor.

Concept framework

The field, and the gap

  1. 01Akoma Ntoso — structured, machine-readable legal documents (OASIS, 2018)
  2. 02LegalRuleML — formal representation of legal norms and defeasible reasoning (OASIS, 2021)
  3. 03Catala — high-assurance executable implementations of computational statute
  4. 04Rules as Code — governments producing machine-consumable rules alongside text
  5. 05Agent identity work — who or what is acting (NIST, 2026)

Case study

A faithfully compiled program that cannot say who may run it

A tax rule is implemented in Catala with formal guarantees that it matches the statute. An agent invokes it and acts on the result. What is still missing?

The authority relationship around the invocation. Catala establishes that the computation is faithful to the law — a hard and valuable property. It does not establish which system is authorised to invoke that computation, under whose delegation, against which version of the institution's policy, or with what evidence. Akoma Ntoso would give the source a clean structure; LegalRuleML would represent the norm's logic; neither says the agent may act on it. Each standard solves a real layer. Computable authority is the layer that binds a faithful rule to an authorised actor at runtime — and it depends on the others rather than displacing them.

Discussion questions

  • Which of these standards should a computable-authority artifact build on directly?
  • Is 'faithful to the statute' the same claim as 'authorised to execute'?
  • Where does the Rules-as-Code movement's experience most inform this work?
  • What would interoperability between these layers actually require?

Exercise

Place one of your instruments across the layers.

  1. 01Take a regulation your organisation must apply.
  2. 02Describe how Akoma Ntoso would structure it and LegalRuleML would represent its norms.
  3. 03Identify the parts that compute (Catala-style) and the parts that adjudicate.
  4. 04State what an authority artifact would add on top: issuer, delegation, version, evidence.
  5. 05Name the layer your organisation currently has, and the ones it does not.

Research notes

  • OASIS — Akoma Ntoso v1.0 and LegalRuleML Core Specification v1.0.
  • Catala / Inria — deriving executable implementations from legislative text.
  • Mohun & Roberts (2020) — Cracking the Code: Rulemaking for Humans and Machines (OECD).
  • NIST NCCoE (2026) — software and AI-agent identity and authorization.
  • Computable Authority, §13 — 'Relationship to Existing Law-as-Code and Agent Work'.
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