Bruce, T. R., and Richards, R. C. (2011). Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. Paper presented at ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artifici

Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The CFR Parallel Table of Authorities & Rules Thomas R. Bruce, Legal Information Institute Robert C. Richards, Jr., University of Washington

Governments create multiple sources of law The sources are interrelated, but exist as isolated “islands” of legal knowledge & information How can one efficiently discover all sources of law related to a particular source of law? The Problem: “Islands”

Example: How to find all regulations issued pursuant to US Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. ch.9? Two “Islands”: The statute is in the U.S. Code, while the regulations are in the Code of Federal Regulations The Problem: Example

In the print environment, specialized legal metadata sources were created, to make explicit relationships between different sources of law. We call these sources “ponts,” because they function as “bridges” between “islands” of legal information One Solution: “Ponts”

Parallel Table of Authorities & Rules (PTOA) Metadata in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Links statutes to regulations they authorize Example of a Pont: The PTOA

1 U.S.C. 112.......................................................1 Part 2 112a--112b.....................................22 Part 181 113....................................................1 Part 2 133..................................................32 Part 151 2 U.S.C. 136.................................................36 Parts 701, 702, 703, 705 170...................................................36 Part 705 PTOA: Excerpt

Most ponts created for print environment require human intervention to ensure connection between the different legal sources they seek to link PTOA in print requires human intervention PTOA in Print: Human-Dependent

Goals: Disintermediation: Make PTOA processable by software without human intervention Foster interoperability & re-use Foster innovation PTOA: Preparing It for Digital

Recommended formats: XML RDF/OWL Why XML & RDF/OWL? Open, international standards Widely used and understood Enable re-use and interoperability Foster innovation: developers are equipped to create new systems to process them PTOA: Preparing It for Digital (cont’d)

Information Retrieval & Discovery Bidirectional discovery Revelation of implicit relationships Automated retrieval Linked Data Scholarly Research Public Administration GIS eParticipation PTOA: Use Cases

Semantics (Ambiguity) Directionality Granularity Data Quality PTOA: Obstacles to Preparation for Digital Use

1. Relationships between sources are ambiguous Relationships represented in a PTOA row may be of four possible types: “Is Express Authority For” “Is Implied Authority For” “Is Applied By” “Is Interpreted By” PTOA Obstacles: Semantics

2. Some PTOA rows list multiple sources on one or both sides: 1 U.S.C. 112.......................................................1 Part 2 112a--112b.....................................22 Part 181 113....................................................1 Part 2 133..................................................32 Part 151 2 U.S.C. 136.................................................36 Parts 701, 702, 703, 705 170...................................................36 Part 705 PTOA Obstacles: Semantics (cont’d)

Result: In many PTOA rows, relationships between sources are multiple and complex Result: In most rows, the precise meaning of relationships is implicit & often not discernible by software PTOA Obstacles: Semantics (cont’d)

In PTOA, retrieval and discovery can only occur in one direction: from statute to regulation 1 U.S.C. […] 112a--112b................................22 Part 181 PTOA Obstacles: Directionality

But in digital world, PTOA could add great value if it were bidirectional: if it enabled discovery from regulations to statutes, as well as from statutes to regulations PTOA Obstacles: Directionality

PTOA regulation cites refer only to the “Part” level of CFR But the relationships intended to be represented in PTOA usually occur at more granular levels: “section” or “sub-section” PTOA Obstacles: Granularity

“1 U.S.C. […] “112a--112b................................22 Part 181” 1 U.S.C. section 112b (subsection (f)) furnishes express authority for subdivisions of 22 C.F.R. part 181 (sections 181.1 through 181.7). 1 U.S.C. section 112a (subsection (d)) furnishes implicit authority for subdivisions of 22 C.F.R. part 181 (sections 181.8 and 181.9). PTOA Obstacles: Granularity: Example

So each PTOA row must be analyzed & divided into multiple rows at accurate level of granularity PTOA Obstacles: Granularity (cont’d)

Production of PTOA is decentralized: each individual agency creates rows for its regulations Result: Inconsistent quality of PTOA data Need: For Digital PTOA to express editor’s evaluation of data quality, in machine-processable metadata PTOA Obstacle: Data Quality

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <ptoa> <ptoaentry>  <authority> <uscode> <title>1</title> <sectrange> <start>112a</start> <end>112b</end> </sectrange> </uscode> </authority> <authorized> <cfr> <title>22</title> <part>181</part> </cfr> </authorized> </ptoaentry> </ptoa> </?xml> Digital PTOA: XML Example: Barebones, No Remedies

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <ptoa> <ptoaentry> <authority type="implicit_authority"> <uscode> <title>1</title> <section urn="urn:lex:us:federal:codified.statute:2010;1.usc.112a@official;house.gov:en$text-html:legal.information.institute">112a</section> <sectionfragment>d</sectionfragment> </uscode> </authority> <authorized> <cfr> <title>22</title> <part urn="urn:lex:us:federal:codified.regulation:2010;22.cfr.181@official;gpo.gov:en$text-xml">181</part> <section urn="urn:lex:us:federal:codified.regulation:2010;22.cfr.181.8@official;gpo.gov:en$text-xml">181.8</section> <section urn="urn:lex:us:federal:codified.regulation:2010;22.cfr.181.9@official;gpo.gov:en$text-xml">181.9</section> </cfr> </authorized> </ptoaentry> </ptoa> </?xml> Digital PTOA: XML: Now with URNs, Granularity, Ranges

<owl:ObjectPropertyrdf:ID="implicitlyAuthorizes"> <owl:inverseOf> <owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="isImplicitlyAuthorizedBy"/> </owl:inverseOf> <rdfs:rangerdf:resource="#AuthorizedItem"/> <rdfs:domainrdf:resource="#AuthorizingItem"/> <rdfs:subPropertyOf> <owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="isAuthorityRefFor"/> </rdfs:subPropertyOf> </owl:ObjectProperty> Digital PTOA: RDFS/OWL: Bidirectionality & Disambiguation

<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasUSCSectionFragment"> <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#USCodeSection"/> <owl:inverseOf> <owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="isUSCSectionFragmentOf"/> </owl:inverseOf> <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#USCodeSectionFragment"/> </owl:ObjectProperty> Digital PTOA: RDFS/OWL: Granularity

Earlier studies of print-based ponts introduced into digital environment: Al-Kofahi et al. (2001); Dabney (1986) McDermott (1986) Findings: a. New uses of ponts arose in digital environment b. Ponts positively influenced retrieval performance Related Research

Legislation.gov.uk (Legislative Information Retrieval): Table of Legislative Effects, CEN MetaLex (legislative status) AGILE (Public Administration System): CEN MetaLex & OWL Similar Projects

Congressional Record: “History of Bills & Resolutions” CFR List of Subjects & Subject Index United States Code Subject Index Constitution of the United States Annotated (CONAN) Other Ponts to Examine

Spring 2011: Receive input from colleagues at conferences Summer & Fall 2011: Build prototype Digital PTOA: Next Steps

Al-Kofahi, K., Tyrrell, A., Vachher, A., Travers, T., and Jackson, P. 2001. Combining multiple classifiers for text categorization. In Proceedings of CIKM '01, 97-104. DOI=10.1145/502585.502603. AlviteDíez, M. L., Pérez-León, B., Martínez González, M., and Blanco, D. F. J. V. 2010. Propuesta de representación del tesauroEurovoc en SKOS parasuintegración en sistemas de informaciónjurídica. Scire 16, 2, 47-51. Bartolini, R., Lenci, A., Montemagni, S., Pirrelli, V., and Soria, C. 2004. Automatic classification and analysis of provisions in Italian legal texts: A case study. In Proceedings of OTM ’04. 593-604. DOI=10.1007/978-3-540-30470-8_72 References (1/5)

Boer, A. and Van Engers, T. 2009. The Agile project: Reconciling agility and legal accountability. In Proceedings ofICT4JUSTICE ’09. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 582, 41-49. Bontouri, L., Papatheodorou, C., Soulikias, V., and Stratis, M. 2009. Metadata interoperability in public sector information. J. Inform. Sci. 35, 2 204-231. DOI=10.1177/0165551508098601. Callister, P. D. 2009. Thinking like a research expert: Schemata for teaching complex problem-solving skills. Legal Ref. Serv. Q. 28, 1/2 (2009), 31-51. DOI=10.1080/02703190902961452. References (2/5)

Dabney, D. P. 1986. The curse of Thamus: An analysis of full-text legal document retrieval. Law Libr. J. 78 ,1 (Win. 1986), 5-40. Dini, L., et al. 2005. Cross-lingual legal information retrieval using a WordNet architecture. In Proceedings of ICAIL ’05, 163-167. DOI=10.1145/1165485.1165510. Ekstrom, J. A. and Lau, G. T. 2008. Exploratory text mining of ocean law to measure overlapping agency and jurisdictional authority. In Proceedings of dg.o’08, 53-62. Francesconi, E., Montemagni, S., Peters, W., and Tiscornia, D., Eds. 2010. Semantic Processing of Legal Texts: Where the Language of Law Meets the Law of Language. Springer, Berlin. References (3/5)

García, R. and Gil, R. 2008. A Web ontology for copyright contracts management. Int. J. Electron. Comm. 12, 4 (Sum. 2008), 99-114. DOI=10.2753/JEC1086-4415120404 Marchetti, A., Megale, F., Seta, E., and Vitali, F. 2002. Using XML as a means to access legislative documents: Italian and foreign experiences. ACM SIGAPP Appl. Comput. Rev. 10, 1, 54-62. DOI=10.1145/568235.568246 McDermott, J. 1986. Another analysis of full-text legal document retrieval. Law Libr. J., 78, 337-344. References (4/5)

Nadah, N., Dulong de Rosnay, M., and Bachimont, B. 2007. Licensing digital content with a generic ontology: Escaping from the jungle of rights expression languages. In Proceedings of ICAIL '07, 65-69. DOI=10.1145/1276318.1276330. Ortiz-Rodríguez, F. 2007. EGODO and applications: Sharing, retrieving and exchanging legal documentation across e-government. In Proceedings of SW4Law ’07, 21-26. Robinson, D. G., Yu, H., Zeller, W., and Felten, E. W. 2009. Government data and the invisible hand. Yale J. Law & Technol. 11, 1, 160-175. References (5/5)

Tom Bruce, Legal Information Institute, trb2 [at] cornell.edu Robert Richards, University of Washington, robertrichards03 [at] gmail.com Contacts

Bruce, T. R., and Richards, R. C. (2011). Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. Paper presented at ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artifici

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (17)

Similar to Bruce, T. R., and Richards, R. C. (2011). Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. Paper presented at ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artifici

Similar to Bruce, T. R., and Richards, R. C. (2011). Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. Paper presented at ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artifici (20)

More from Robert Richards

More from Robert Richards (12)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Bruce, T. R., and Richards, R. C. (2011). Adapting Specialized Legal Metadata to the Digital Environment: The Code of Federal Regulations Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules. Paper presented at ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artifici