PageRank das normas brasileiras no Diário Oficial da União de 2002 a 2022

Abstract

Introduction: From 1988 to 2023, approximately 7.5 million norms were created in Brazil. Thus, finding the most relevant norms related to a topic among different branches of government and federated entities is a challenge for researchers, legal practitioners, and citizens in general. On the other hand, Google's PageRank algorithm solved a similarproblem for web pages by ranking the most relevant pages related to a topic. Therefore, this research applied PageRank to Brazilian norms. Based on Hans Kelsen's Hierarchy of Norms and Pure Theory of Law, the research problem sought to determine if the Constitution would have the highest PageRank. Objectives: The general objective was to provide programmers and jurists with a rational basis for legal operations. Specific objectives included defining abstractly the concept of norm and the importance of norms, determining the most important norm in the Brazilian Legal System, and exploring legal and computational consequences. Methodology: To achieve these objectives, the database comprised 20 years of publications in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU), from January 2002 to December 2022. Python was used as the computational language for data collection, processing, structuring, and analysis. The Têmis library, also developed in Python, was used to computationally operate Brazilian norms. Results: With the adopted methodology, it was found that the PageRank of the analyzed norms corresponded to Kelsen's Pyramid. Thus, the Constitution obtained the highest PageRank. Finally, Law was reflected upon in four different ways as an Exact Science: through deduction, induction, analogy, and abduction. Discussion: The research applied Algebra specifically to Law and Computer Science. Therefore, the study proved relevant to related projects such as LexML by the Senate and the Normativas platform by the Ministry of Education (MEC). The possible creation of Google Law was also discussed. Contributions: To fully model the norms, twelve new concepts in Algebra were required, including nine general notions (principle, purpose, conjuncture, structure, substructure, infrastructure, superstructure, object, and principality) and three functions (intraobjective, extraobjective, and transobjective). Based on these three functions, the Têmis library is also a contribution of this work. The new concepts also contributed to the understanding of what Sciences would be, and that Law could also be approached as an Exact Science. Thus, we discussed a new teaching modality, corresponding to Aristotle's Practical Science.