The typical premise behind automation is to remove the (ethical and financial) burden of a human workforce while keeping the benefits provided by human labor. For most business processes this is acceptable (inevitable loss of jobs notwithstanding.)<p>But when your &#x27;product&#x27; is violence on behalf of the state (in the anarcho-libertarian sense of &#x27;violence&#x27; being any non-voluntary interaction with a person or power structure, sometimes involving actual violence) then the ability of humans to mediate, alter and affect that system becomes a feature as well as a bug. This necessarily limits the speed of the law and the degree to which it can be optimized, and remain humane, because removing humans from that system tends to merely concentrate power in the hands of the few humans necessary for it to function.<p>And then the questions become if humans can write the laws, and humans can update the laws, and humans are enforcing the laws, and have discretion in doing so, then what really is being automated, or optimized, other than recordkeeping? And for that matter, what does law as a programming language actually <i>improve</i>?