Re: Schema for legal judgements?

Am Donnerstag, den 31.05.2012, 07:46 -0700 schrieb Dan Brickley:

> However, given the complex and technical nature of the topic (and its
> international aspects) I would prefer that we identify collaboration
> with existing schemas/vocabularies/ontologies than begin a fresh
> effort. I am copying Rinke and Michael here who might have thoughts on
> existing initiatives - around legal XML and the linked govt data
> communities. For related works, see
> http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/tag/rinke-hoekstra/ and in
> particular http://doc.metalex.eu/ ("This service hosts (almost) all
> Dutch national regulations in CEN MetaLex XML and as RDF Linked
> Data."). I'm particularly concerned to understand better whether a
> single high-level schema might be useful internationally, or whether
> there is too much variation between jurisdictions for this to be be
> feasible.

I had a quick look at the legal case ontology proposed by Hoekstra &
Wyner here:
http://wyner.info/LanguageLogicLawSoftware/index.php/2010/05/05/legal-case-ontology-owl-file/
And an even briefer look at the Metalex description here:
ftp://ftp.cen.eu/CEN/Sectors/List/ICT/CWAs/CWA15710-2010-Metalex2.pdf
As far as I can see, most of the elements I was thinking of are there.  

Hoekstra & Wyner seem to propose their case ontology to stand beside the
existing regulations ontology (Metalex). Metalex doesn't define an
ontology for case law (yet, but a future version may do so). I think
this makes a lot of sense, because case law and regulations are quite
different documents. 

As far as I can see relations to legal regulations/codes seem to be
missing from the case law ontology (maybe I have missed them, or maybe
because the ontology is developed using a US example?). Obviously,
relations between cases and regulations need to be defined, at least for
describing cases from the civil law/continental tradition.

I don't know about the description of legal argumentation Hoekstra &
Wyner are attempting, I guess this would be very nice to have (list all
cases arguing in favor of X), but it increases the cataloguing effort
tremendously.

Here's an example for the kind of data I am thinking of:
http://openjur.de/u/394907.html
(A case by the German Federal Court that refers to the relevant field of
law, sections of the German Civil Code and earlier decisions, it has a
number of headnotes for orientation etc.)

Michael

-- 
Michael Below <below@judiz.de>

Received on Tuesday, 12 June 2012 15:24:13 UTC