Re: vocabulary for legal decision (e.g., Supreme Court cases)

Stuart,

Its already pretty easy to search US Supreme Court cases for various
terms.  Ex.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?Search=headscarf&type=Site


On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 12:11 PM Stuart Robinson <stuartro@google.com> wrote:

> Just now getting back to this and replying to the helpful comments that
> people provided. Bear with me... ;-)
>
> Thanks for those links, Thad. I'm not able to look at the documents from
> xmllegal.com because they seem to require a username and password. I'll
> follow up and see whether I can gain access. I started looking at the XSD
> files from mncourts.gov and my initial impression is that it's just too
> complicated for schema.org.
>
> I think the real challenge here is going to be coming up with something
> simple and general enough to be useful and widely applicable. As you point
> out, thinking about what people want to filter by is going to be key. And
> that means identifying the audience, which for now isn't necessarily
> attorneys or judges but rather lay people who want some basic information
> about an important legal decision, such as a US Supreme Court case outcome.
>
> On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 8:19 AM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ​My only suggestion and helpful guidance here would be...
>>
>> ​​
>> perhaps looking at other high level schema
>> ​and vocabulary ​
>> for court systems that are
>> ​already ​
>> out there.
>> ​
>>
>> ​Think about what consumers or different users will want to filter by
>> primarily.  If its a student researcher, they are searching differently by
>> Case Types typically, compared to someone just wanting to see the summary
>> judgement of a specific case X v. Y​
>>
>> ​Each court system and state courts do their own Schema manipulation and
>> have differing standards... there is no single standard for e-Filing or
>> Reference systems unfortunately in the USA.  Even if Schema.org was
>> involved, it would probably not change publicly facing resources very
>> quickly because they are so ingrained in their current architectures and
>> have little budget to enhance those typically.  But regardless, an effort
>> should be made for Schema.org and extensions to provide some high level
>> schema to help cross the gaps and digital divide on those documents
>> especially for the public good.​
>>
>> ​
>> ​
>> Here's some I found :
>>
>> This one provides nice XSD files with some noteworthy enumerations inside
>> of them.:​​
>> http://mncourts.gov/default.aspx?page=1379&printFriendly=true
>> (I look
>> ​ed over​
>>  the Chameleon files
>> ​quickly​
>> )
>>
>> ​http://www.xmllegal.org/CourtXML/
>> ​
>> ​Best,​
>>
>>
>> Thad
>> +ThadGuidry <https://www.google.com/+ThadGuidry>
>>
>> On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:43 AM, Stuart Robinson <stuartro@google.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I've noticed that schema.org doesn't provide vocabulary for legal
>>> decisions--e.g., the Supreme Court case Citizens United vs Federal Election
>>> Commission:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia..org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
>>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC>
>>>
>>> http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=08-205
>>>
>>> One challenge for modeling this domain is coming up with a model that
>>> accommodates different types of courts, both within and between countries.
>>> It may be easier to develop a model for US legal decisions first and then
>>> expand it later or create other types for non-US courts.
>>>
>>> With that in mind, I would propose the type USLegalDecision with the
>>> following properties:
>>>
>>> name: the name of the decision (for Supreme Court cases, usually
>>> something like "X v Y")
>>> court: the court where the decision was made (e.g., Supreme Court)
>>> country:the country where the decision applies
>>> whenArgued: the date on which arguments
>>> whenDecided: the date on which the decision was rendered
>>> citation: the case citation for the decision
>>> courtAppealedFrom: which court the case was appealed from (optional
>>> since some cases low-level courts aren't appealed from another court)
>>> [note: optional given that a decision in a lower court won't be appealed
>>> from another court]
>>>
>>> Using the Citizens United example, here's what the values might look
>>> like:
>>>
>>> name: "Citizens United versus FEC"
>>> court: "Supreme Court"
>>> country: "USA"
>>> whenArgued: [ "March 24, 2009", "September 9, 2009" ]
>>> whenDecided: "January 21, 2010"
>>> citation: "Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n, (558 U.S. ___
>>> (2010); Docket No. 08-205)"
>>> courtAppealedFrom: "United States District Court for the District of
>>> Columbia"
>>>
>>> There are some additional properties to consider, such as the following:
>>>
>>> Judge(s)
>>> OpinionAuthor
>>> ConcurrenceAuthor
>>> DissentAuthor
>>> LegalHolding(s)
>>>
>>> Thoughts on the general modeling issues here (e.g., US-specificity) and
>>> feedback on the specific proposal would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Stuart Robinson
>>>
>>
>>
>