Legal Theory, Sources of Law and the Semantic Web


Book Description

Attempts to construct an integrated conceptual framework for the application-neutral and problem-neutral representation of sources of law using Semantic Web technology and concepts and some technically straightforward extensions to Semantic Web technology based on established practices found in fielded applications.




Legal Theory, Sources of Law and the Semantic Web


Book Description

Legal Theory, Sources of Law and the Semantic Web is an attempt to construct an integrated conceptual framework for the application-neutral and problem-neutral representation of sources of law using Semantic Web technology and concepts, and some technically straightforward extensions to Semantic Web technology based on established practices found in fielded applications. To construct this framework, the author disentangled some problems that are often mixed up in legal theory and – in extension – legal knowledge representation. The purpose of this framework is to provide a theoretical background for the creation of reusable and maintainable knowledge components representing knowledge of sources of law on the Semantic Web. These components should form a basis for the development for computer applications supporting straightforward, routine decision making problems using traditional methods. This book aims to be a work of ontology: an account of relevant aspects of the knowledge domain of law from the perspective of a legal knowledge engineer interested in sources of law. One cannot however say that the result of this work is an ontology: this book presents a mix of design principles, design patterns for knowledge representation in OWL DL and ontology fragments.




Law and the Semantic Web


Book Description

by Roberto Cencioni At the Lisbon Summit in March 2000, European heads of state and government set a new goal for the European Union — to become the most competitive knowled- based society in the world by 2010. As part of this objective, ICT (information and communication technologies) services should become available for every citizen, and for all schools, homes and businesses. The book you have in front of you is about Semantic Web technology and law. Law is something omnipresent; all citizens — at some points in their lives — have to deal with it. In addition, law involves a large group of professionals, and is a mul- billion business world wide. Information technology is important because it that can improve citizens’ interaction with law, as well as improve legal professionals’ work environment. Legal professionals dedicate a significant amount of their time to finding, reading, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to take decisions, and prepare advice and trials, among other tasks. As part of the “Semantic-Based Knowledge and Content Systems” Strategic Objective, the European Commission is funding projects to construct technology to make the Semantic Web vision come true. 1 The articles in this book are related to two current foci of the Strategic Objective : • Knowledge acquisition and modelling, capturing knowledge from raw information and multimedia content in webs and other distributed repositories to turn poorly structured information into machi- processable knowledge.




Approaches to Legal Ontologies


Book Description

The book provides the reader with a unique source regarding the current theoretical landscape in legal ontology engineering as well as on foreseeable future trends for the definition of conceptual structures to enhance the automatic processing and retrieval of legal information in the Semantic Web framework. It will thus interest researchers in the domains of the SW, legal informatics, Artificial Intelligence and law, legal theory and legal philosophy, as well as developers of e-government applications based on the intelligent management of legal or public information to provide both back-office and front-office support.




Law, Ontologies and the Semantic Web


Book Description

Based on workshops and conferences on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Law, this work deals with legal ontologies and Semantic Web applications, covering both theoretical aspects and practical systems.




User-generated Knowledge Through Legal Ontologies


Book Description

This thesis presents a study of the epistemological and cognitive assumptions which currently underlie knowledge acquisition for legal ontology engineering. The hypothesis is that such assumptions might have a qualitative effect on the final ontologicalterminological resources and therefore on the performance of the systems which use them. The first part of the thesis presents the state of the art in legal ontology engineering (the computational concept of ontology, a review of available legal ontologies and modelling methodologies). The second part of the thesis shows that currently knowledge acquisition in legal ontology learning is limited to very concrete legal genres, namely, legislation, case law and legal doctrine. The third part presents a case study in which two different legal genres are used for building a consumer law ontology: a traditional legal genre, Italian consumer regulation, and a Web 2.0 genre, namely an online corpus of citizens' queries regarding consumer justice. Results proof the impact of legal genre variation on the construction of the domain ontology. Thus main findings suggest that Web 2.0 corpora are a rich source for the construction of ontological resources, and at the same time these new types of ontological resources might be useful in e-government applications aimed at increasing online communication with citizens. The framework in which the study is conducted is the convergence between Web 3.0 and Web 2.0. This convergence implies the addition of one level of complexity to the main goal of the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0). Indeed, whereas Web 3.0 applied to the legal domain implies the automatic semantic interpretation of traditional legal sources (i.e. laws, judgements, administrative decisions), and Web 2.0 implies distributed models of production of knowledge by unknown users (i.e. blogs, blawgs, forums, social networks), the convergence of both implies the semantic processing of textual input produced by laymen in a distributed way. From the point of view of governance models this technical endeavour has a direct impact on the design of new e-government platforms for public service provision and citizen participation. The study has thus a twofold relevance: technical, as far as legal knowledge acquisition methodologies and legal ontology modelling are concerned; and socio-institutional, given the importance of semantic processing of laymen input for the design of new relational patterns between citizens and institutions.




Knowledge of the Law in the Big Data Age


Book Description

The changes brought about by digital technology and the consequent explosion of information known as Big Data have brought opportunities and challenges in all areas of society, and the law is no exception. This book, Knowledge of the Law in the Big Data Age contains a selection of the papers presented at the conference ‘Law via the Internet 2018’, held in Florence, Italy, on 11-12 October 2018. This annual conference of the ‘Free Access to Law Movement’ (http://www.fatlm.org) hosted more than 60 international speakers from universities, government and research bodies as well as EU institutions. Topics covered range from free access to law and Big Data and data analytics in the legal domain, to policy issues concerning access, publishing and the dissemination of legal information, tools to support democratic participation and opportunities for digital democracy. The book is divided into 3 sections: Part I provides an introductory background, covering aspects such as the evolution of legal science and models for representing the law; Part II addresses the present and future of access to law and to various legal information sources; and Part III covers updates in projects, initiatives, and concrete achievements in the field. The book provides an overview of the practical implementation of legal information systems and the tools to manage this special kind of information, as well as some of the critical issues which must be faced, and will be of interest to all those working at the intersection of law and technology.




Computable Models of the Law


Book Description

Information technology has now pervaded the legal sector, and the very modern concepts of e-law and e-justice show that automation processes are ubiquitous. European policies on transparency and information society, in particular, require the use of technology and its steady improvement. Some of the revised papers presented in this book originate from a workshop held at the European University Institute of Florence, Italy, in December 2006. The workshop was devoted to the discussion of the different ways of understanding and explaining contemporary law, for the purpose of building computable models of it -- especially models enabling the development of computer applications for the legal domain. During the course of the following year, several new contributions, provided by a number of ongoing (or recently finished) European projects on computation and law, were received, discussed and reviewed to complete the survey. This book presents 20 thoroughly refereed revised papers on the hot topics under research in different EU projects: legislative XML, legal ontologies, semantic web, search and meta-search engines, web services, system architecture, dialectic systems, dialogue games, multi-agent systems (MAS), legal argumentation, legal reasoning, e-justice, and online dispute resolution. The papers are organized in topical sections on knowledge representation, ontologies and XML legislative drafting; knowledge representation, legal ontologies and information retrieval; argumentation and legal reasoning; normative and multi-agent systems; and online dispute resolution.




AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems


Book Description

The inspiring idea of this workshop series, Artificial Intelligence Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems (AICOL), is to develop models of legal knowledge, concerning organization, structure and content, in order to promote mutual understanding and communication between different systems and cultures. Complexity and complex systems describe recent developments in AI and law, legal theory, argumentation, the Semantic Web, and multi-agent systems. The aim of the AICOL workshops is thus to offer effective support for the exchange of knowledge and methodological approaches between scholars from different scientific fields, by highlighting their similarities and differences. The comparison of multiple formal approaches to the law (such as logical models, cognitive theories, argumentation frameworks, graph theory, game theory), as well as opposite perspectives like internal and the external viewpoints, this volume stresses possible convergences, as, for instance, are possible in the realms of conceptual structures, argumentation schemes, emergent behaviors, learning evolution, adaptation, and simulation. This volume assembles 15 thoroughly refereed and revised papers, selected from two workshops organized at the XXIV World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR, Beijing, China, September 15-20, 2009) and at JURIX-09 (December 16-19, 2009, Rotterdam). The papers are organized in topical sections on language and complex systems in law, ontologies and the representation of legal knowledge, argumentation and logics, as well as dialogue and legal multimedia.




Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic Web, KESW 2016, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in September 2016.The 17 revised full papers presented together with 9 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 53 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on ontologies; information and knowledge extraction; data management; applications.