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AnonTechie writes:

Wired.com has an interesting story on Measuring the Complexity of the Law:

Our technological systems are becoming more complicated. In some cases, even so complicated that the experts involved in their construction don't fully understand them any more ( http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/is-technology-making-the-world-too-complex/ ). But too often, when we think about technology, we focus on certain kinds of systems: computers and large machines. But there are many other anthropic systems that might be considered technologies. And this includes our laws. Essentially, our legal codes are complicated technologies, growing and becoming more interconnected over time.

But how complicated are our laws? In a working paper titled "Measuring the Complexity of the Law: The United States Code" ( abstract at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2307352 ), Daniel Katz and Michael Bommarito of Michigan State University recently set out to measure exactly that. They attempted to quantitatively measure the complexity of the United States Code, using what is roughly a metric for how hard it is to understand it. The U.S. Code is essentially the collection of all federal laws, and consists of 51 Titles, or sections, that each deal with different topics. For example, Title 11 is related to bankruptcy, Title 26 is our tax code, and Title 39 deals with our postal service. Since there are many sections with different topics and styles, comparing the complexity of different Titles is a natural means of examining differential legal complexity. But how to do so?