Legislative XML for the Semantic Web


Book Description

This volume examines the basic layers of the standard-based creation and usage of legislation. In particular, it addresses the identification of legislative documents, their structure, the basic metadata and legislative changes. Since mature technologies and established practices are already in place for these layers, a standard-based approach is a necessary aspect of the up-to-date management of legislative resources. Starting out with an overview of the context for the use of XML standards in legislation, the book next examines the rationale of standard-based management of legislative documents. It goes on to address such issues as naming, the Akoma-Ntoso document model, the contribution of standard-based document management to handling legislative dynamics, meta-standards and interchange standards. The volume concludes with a discussion of semantic resources and a review on systems and projects.




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.




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.







Logic in the Theory and Practice of Lawmaking


Book Description

This book presents the current state of the art regarding the application of logical tools to the problems of theory and practice of lawmaking. It shows how contemporary logic may be useful in the analysis of legislation, legislative drafting and legal reasoning concerning different contexts of law making. Elaborations of the process of law making have variously emphasised its political, social or economic aspects. Yet despite strong interest in logical analyses of law, questions remains about the role of logical tools in law making. This volume attempts to bridge that gap, or at least to narrow it, drawing together some important research problems—and some possible solutions—as seen through the work of leading contemporary academics. The volume encompasses 20 chapters written by authors from 16 countries and it presents diversified views on the understanding of logic (from strict mathematical approaches to the informal, argumentative ones) and differentiated choices concerning the aspects of law making taken into account. The book presents a broad set of perspectives, insights and results into the emerging field of research devoted to the logical analysis of the area of creation of law. How does logic inform lawmaking? Are legal systems consistent and complete? How can legal rules be represented by means of formal calculi and visualization techniques? Does the structure of statutes or of legal systems resemble the structure of deductive systems? What are the logical relations between the basic concepts of jurisprudence that constitute the system of law? How are theories of legal interpretation relevant to the process of legislation? How might the statutory text be analysed by means of contemporary computer programs? These and other questions, ranging from the theoretical to the immediately practical, are addressed in this definitive collection.




AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems


Book Description

This book includes revised selected papers from five International Workshops on Artificial Intelligence Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems, AICOL VI to AICOL X, held during 2015-2017: AICOL VI in Braga, Portugal, in December 2015 as part of JURIX 2015; AICOL VII at EKAW 2016 in Bologna, Italy, in November 2016; AICOL VIII in Sophia Antipolis, France, in December 2016; AICOL IX at ICAIL 2017 in London, UK, in June 2017; and AICOL X as part of JURIX 2017 in Luxembourg, in December 2017. The 37 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected form 69 submissions. They represent a comprehensive picture of the state of the art in legal informatics. The papers are organized in six main sections: legal philosophy, conceptual analysis, and epistemic approaches; rules and norms analysis and representation;legal vocabularies and natural language processing; legal ontologies and semantic annotation; legal argumentation; and courts, adjudication and dispute resolution.




Data and Information Quality


Book Description

This book provides a systematic and comparative description of the vast number of research issues related to the quality of data and information. It does so by delivering a sound, integrated and comprehensive overview of the state of the art and future development of data and information quality in databases and information systems. To this end, it presents an extensive description of the techniques that constitute the core of data and information quality research, including record linkage (also called object identification), data integration, error localization and correction, and examines the related techniques in a comprehensive and original methodological framework. Quality dimension definitions and adopted models are also analyzed in detail, and differences between the proposed solutions are highlighted and discussed. Furthermore, while systematically describing data and information quality as an autonomous research area, paradigms and influences deriving from other areas, such as probability theory, statistical data analysis, data mining, knowledge representation, and machine learning are also included. Last not least, the book also highlights very practical solutions, such as methodologies, benchmarks for the most effective techniques, case studies, and examples. The book has been written primarily for researchers in the fields of databases and information management or in natural sciences who are interested in investigating properties of data and information that have an impact on the quality of experiments, processes and on real life. The material presented is also sufficiently self-contained for masters or PhD-level courses, and it covers all the fundamentals and topics without the need for other textbooks. Data and information system administrators and practitioners, who deal with systems exposed to data-quality issues and as a result need a systematization of the field and practical methods in the area, will also benefit from the combination of concrete practical approaches with sound theoretical formalisms.




Drafting Legislation


Book Description

Drafting Legislation sets out to prove Sir William Dale's doctrine that the rules for drafting good quality legislation are the same in common and civil systems of law. Legislative solutions can therefore serve the drafter, the judge and the practitioner of any jurisdiction. The book discusses the general issue of quality in legislation from the legislative process to the actual drafting interpretation and enforcement. It also analyzes topics related to quality in legislation such as clarity, precision and disambiguity, plain language and gender-neutral language and assesses whether Sir William's view of universality in the definition and elements of quality in legislation is right or not. The volume is of critical interest to students and scholars of European law and the philosophy and theory of law.




Formal Linguistics and Law


Book Description

The volume explores new interfaces between linguistics and jurisprudence. Its theoretical and methodological importance lies in showing that many questions asked within language and law receive satisfactory answers from formal linguistics, including computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, translation studies, psycholinguistics, semantics, phonetics and corpus linguistics.




E-Infrastructures and E-Services on Developing Countries


Book Description

The first edition of a conference is a significant organizational and scientific gamble. In some cases, these challenges are rewarded by results well above the initial expec- tions. AFRICOMM 2009, the First International ICST Conference on e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries, was clearly one of such cases. The conference aimed at bringing together international researchers, public of- cers, policy makers and practitioners in ICT to discuss issues and trends, recent research, innovation advances, and on-the-field experiences related to e-Government, e-Governance, e-Infrastructure, and e-Business, with a focus on developing countries. It is in fact widely accepted that ICT Infrastructure and (e-*)services are key drivers for development, well-being, and improved quality of life. This was also highlighted by Kofi Annan, former UN General Secretary, in 2002: “While ICT cannot address all of [Africa's] problems, they can do much to place Africa on a firmer industrial footing. . . and strengthen the continent's human resources, with training that leads to sustainable livelihoods. ” AFRICOMM 2009 was organized in three tracks: two of them organized as Research Tracks, on Information and Communication Infrastructures and on e- Services for Developing Countries, and one Policy and Governance Track. Contri- tions to the first two tracks were selected by peer-review, while the policies session involved key stakeholders in the areas of ICT, development, and policy making who submitted position papers. Participation and selection of papers for the tracks was quite good.