Page 146 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

Media as Mathematics - Calculating Justice 137

inquiry. Indeed, it is to follow a quasi-legal argument or proposition expressed
in mathematical form. The mathematical form expresses a basic logic or
grammar for innumerable verbal utterances. The equation mimetically
represents, copies and recodifies, in shorthand or even cryptic form, patterns of
inference based on the existing statute and its interpretation in individual
cases. The capture of such case details can be seen to involve translation
between verbal and numeric/visual languages from conventional court records
to tabular data sheets, the latter being subservient to the former. ―The letters of
applied algebra are usually‖ assumed to be ―tokens‖, while the imperative
alphanumeric syntactical codes (―where‖, ―=‖, ―[ ...]‖) seem to replicate the
function of verbal rules. Peirce would say that the algorithm is an alternative
representation or type of the symbolic habits of decision-makers, its algebra
being one of Seconds. A final outcome (fv) is output, based on a ranking of iv
for each case and is translatable as probable judgment in favour of or against a
petitioner which can be compared directly to actual decisions.
Kort‘s own explanation of the above expressions remains technically
sound yet discursively cryptic. Such phrasing, however, would definitely not
be comfortably or easily read by politicians or legal professionals, who are
presumably intended in part to be its readers. The problem of the apparent
incommensurability of natural and symbolic or mathematical languages arises.
What takes precedent? What form of translation or mediation between the two
can occur between legal and programming professionals?
Roland Barthes [1973] demanded semiotic analysis and educative
attention to photographs and visual texts that were previously not regarded as
worthy of such analysis. Peirce anticipates such interest and addresses the
semiotic nature of a full array of imagery- photographs, patterns, diagrams,
logical and numeric graphs – within a fluid understanding of language and
mathematical forms. Gunter Kress continues inquiry into meaning, logic,
representation and communication, in terms of ―different semiotics‖,
especially between contrasting verbal ―language‖ and visual ―imagery‖
[1996].
For Peirce (and presumably Kevelson), the ―letters of algebra‖ are not
only presumed as applied tokens: in particular, the intermediary value, (iv), is
not presented nor directly translatable into verbal language but is computed
through a recursive process that is supplementary to anything expressed in or
by a court. As Peirce said, ―as for algebra, the very idea of the art is that it
presents formulae which can be manipulated, and that by observing the effects
of such manipulation we find properties not to be otherwise discerned.‖ Yet
this supplementary dimension of the algorithmic proposition is essential to its