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12 Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/cstlr12 and id is 1 raw text is: The Columbia SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LAW REVIEW www.stlr.org THE VARIABLE DETERMINACY THESIS Harry SurdenI This Article proposes a novel technique for characterizing the relative determinacy of legal decision-making. I begin with the observation that the determinacy of legal outcomes varies from context to context within the law. To augment this intuition, I develop a theoretical model of determinate legal decision-making. This model aims to capture the essential features that are typically associated with the concept of legal determinacy. I then argue that we can use such an idealized model as a standard for expressing the relative determinacy or indeterminacy of decision-making in actual, observed legal contexts. From a legal theory standpoint, this approach - separating determinacy and indeterminacy into their constituent conceptual elements - helps us to more rigorously define these theoretical ideas. Ultimately, from a practical standpoint, I assert that this framework assists in understanding why legal outcomes in certain contexts are determinate enough to be amenable to resolution by computers. Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School. B.A. Cornell University; J.D. Stanford University. Many thanks to Stanford Law School for supporting this work through my fellowship with the Stanford Center for Computers and Law, as well as to the generous support of the University of Colorado Law School. I am grateful for the ideas and challenges of Michael Genesereth from the Stanford Computer Science Department whose tireless efforts inspired this work. Many thanks to Paul Ohm, Phil Weiser, Pierre Schlag, Andrew Schwartz, Alexia Brunet, Vic Fleischer, and the rest of my excellent colleagues at the University of Colorado Law School for their input. Many thanks also to Seema Shah, Andrew Coan, and Viva Moffat for their very helpful comments. Finally, thanks to Ashley Boothby, Molly locker and Blake Reid for their excellent research assistance. Cite as htto:I//www vstir org/cite.cgi2volume= 12 &article= 1 This work is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution- N oncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

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