The Genesis

If I can pin down the genesis of Canada’s Legal Anatomy, it would probably be in the summer of 2014. I had just graduated with a Bachelor of Science After-Degree in Mathematics and took on a research position with the Department of Mathematics and Statistical Science at the University of Alberta to develop content for the MATH 201 Differential Equations course for engineering students.

It was in this position that I learned to program a computer to draw figures related to the content I was developing. For example, on the topic of Chaos Theory, I constructed the graphic below to represent the quasi-cyclical behaviour of a double pendulum.

By the end of my employment, I had accepted a position at the Edmonton Law Courts as a Judicial Clerk in the Court of Queen’s Bench.

During my employment, I was able to formulate a way to automatically collect the data that was otherwise being manually recorded. I recall becoming engrossed in my automated program, spending every lunch and break working on it and even came in on weekends. Almost every day for several weeks I would stay several hours after work continuing to work on the program.

Over time, I had fallen in love with the law and I decided to apply to law school. I was eventually accepted to the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta, and began winding down at the government.

However, my interest in the union of computing and the law was just beginning. While my foray into the practical application of computing to the law continued, I also turned my attention to more theoretical aspects.

One day in early Spring 2015, while researching the intersection of law and computing on a lunch break, I came across the idea of presenting legislation as a mathematical object known as a "graph."

I quickly put to work applying my computer skills to extract the hierarchy of the Rules of Court, Alta Reg 124/2010, and present that heirarchy as a graph.

However, I soon recognized a deficiency in the representation. While the hierarchical structure was encoded in the figure, the hierarchical content was absent. That is, while one could clearly appreciate how certain sections were divided into further, different sections, there was no way to determine which section was which.

After much consideration, I was able to figure out how to account for this inconsistency by including a chromatic dimension: I could colour each edge in the representation, with unique colours representing each division in the hierarchical structure of the Rules of Court. The result of this colouring can be seen in the following image:

The end of this story is this store. I am beyond proud and I sincerely hope you enjoy your new visual representations of your favourite federal and provincial Acts in what I have called Canada’s Legal Anatomy.

Thank you for your interest!

 

Landon Haynes