Law Making Environment Perspectives

Law Making Environment Law Making Environment PerspectivesPerspectives

C. Biagioli, L. Bacci, E. Francesconi, F. TurchiITTIG-CNR Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica

A. Cappelli ISTI-CNR Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell’Informazione

V Legislative XML Workshop Fiesole, 14 – 16 June 2006

ITTIG - CNR

OverviewOverview• Law-Making Environment

– Tools for the “Legislator” based on semantic models;

• Model of Provisions and Arguments;

• Software architecture of a module for Planning a new bill;

• Conclusions.

Legislation management:Legislation management:State of the ArtState of the Art

• Upkeep of current legislation through URN and XML standards;

• This guarantees:– Web accessibility of new and legacy contents;– Interoperability among applications;– Advanced search and retrieval services based on semantics;– Automatic consolidation;

• The most part of tools dealing with standards for legislation are addressed to documentalists rather than to the Legislator;

PurposesPurposes• Providing the Law-Maker with a set of drafting

tools allowing to plan organic and well structure bills;

• Strategy:– Ex-ante (Lachmayer) management of the semantics;

• Benefits:– planning a new organic bill from a conceptual (semantic) point of

view;– Metadata are directly inserted by the Legislator

• they will be “authentic” metadata;

Semantic ModelSemantic Model

• Model of Provisions and Arguments:– Amendments (Insertion, Abrogation, Substitution);

– Rules (Obligation, Prohibition, Penalties, Exceptions, …);

and their Arguments;

• It is a standard within the “Norme in Rete” DTDs/XMLSchema;

NIR-DTD document descriptionNIR-DTD document description

• The NIR standards describe a legislative text under two profiles:

– the formal profile:• It considers a law text as made up of divisions;• It describes the physical structure of a document;

– the functional profile:• It considers a normative text as composed by elementary

components called provisions (fragment of a regulation);• It is described by provisions types and their arguments;• It describes the logical structure of a document.

A fragment of legislative text viewed A fragment of legislative text viewed according to the formalaccording to the formal

and the functional profileand the functional profile

1. A controller intending to process personal data falling within the scope of application of this Act shall have to notify the Garante thereof…

Type of provision: “Obligation”

Arguments:

Addressee: “Controller”

Action:“Notification”

Counter-party:“Garante”

Division(or Paragraph)

Formal profile

Functional Profile

2. The notification shall have to be given…

Article 7 (Notification)

Legislative Document within the Legislative Document within the NIR environmentNIR environment

Article 1 (Purposes and definitions)… 2. For the purposes of this Act:

a) "data bank" shall mean any set of personal data, … …Article 7 (Notification)

1. A controller intending to process personal data falling within the scope of application of this Act shall have to notify the Garante thereof

…Article 42 (Amendments to laws in force )

2. For paragraph 1 of article 4 of legislative decree no. 39 of 12 February 1993 there shall be substituted the following:“1. An Authority for information technology in the public administration…”

Definition(definiendum =“data bank”, definiens= “any set of personal data…”)

Obligation(addressee=“controller”, action =“notification”, counter-party=“Garante”)

Substitution(norm=“urn:…”, novellando=“paragraph 1 of article 4”, novella= “#…”)

LME: Tools for Law MakersLME: Tools for Law MakersU

RN

, XM

L S

tand

ards

XML Partitions Skeleton and Semantics

Provision ModelsDomain Keywords

Meta Drafting

GenerationAutomatic provisionswording

DB Provisions

AggregationQueries on provisions

PlanningProvisions typesArgument Keywords

XML Partitions Skeleton and Text

XML Text (Structure and Semantics)

Editor(wording)

Editor(structure)

metaEdit(semantic markup)

Drafting

XML Partitions Skeleton

tomorrow

today

xmLegesEditor

today

Semantic MarkUp: MetaEditSemantic MarkUp: MetaEdit

today

Arguments of the chosen

provision type



Filling theArgument

Semantic markup view


MetaDrafting: LME ProjectMetaDrafting: LME Project

• Planning;• Aggregation;• Generation.

tomorrow

Planning basic elements1. Model of Provisions and Arguments;

2. Ontology of concepts and terms of the scenario to be regulated;

3. Definition manager;

4. Visual panel where provisions types and their arguments can be handle as visual objects;

1. Model of Provisions and Arguments

OWL description of theprovision taxonomy;

Obligation

Addressee

Regulative ObjectProperty

hasAddressee

Action

hasActionCounter-party

hasCounterParty

Provision subClassOf

<owl:Class rdf:ID=“Provision”><owl:Class rdf:ID=“Regulative”> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Provision”/><owl:Class rdf:ID=“Obligation”> <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Regulative”/>

…<owl:Class rdf:ID=“Addressee”/><owl:Class rdf:ID=“Action”/><owl:Class rdf:ID=“Counter-party”/>

… <owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasAddressee”> <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#Obligation”/> <rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Addressee”/> </owl:ObjectProperty>

2. Ontology of concepts and terms of the scenario to be regulated

• Two levels:– Ontology (classes of legal concepts);– Lexicon (terms as instantiations of legal concepts);

Legal acthas_hyperonym

NotificationNotice

has_hyponym

• These terms are used to provide values to the provision arguments.

3. Definition Manager• Specific terms of the domain of interest not

contained in the vocabulary can be inserted and defined using a Definition Manager;

• Also these new terms can be used to provide values to the provision arguments.

4. Visual Panel• Panel where to handle:

– Provision Types as visual objects;– Provision Arguments whose values are terms from the

“Definition Manager”;

File Edit View Insert Options Help

Planning visual panelFile Edit View Insert Options … Help

ConstitutivesRegulatives >Regulatives >Amendments

ObligationObligationProcedurePenalty…

Provision >Provision >……

Obligation Addreesee: Action: Counter-party:

SemanticNet

- Legal act - Notification - Notice

Notification Definition Manager

‘data bank’shall mean …

‘personal data’ shall mean any information relating to natural or Legal persons…

Planning visual panelFile Edit View Insert Options … Help

Obligation Addreesee: Controller Action: Notification Counter-party: Garante

Definition Definiendum: Personal data Definiens: …

Procedure Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party:

Definition Definiendum: Data bank Definiens: …

Derogation Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party:

Aggregation:from Provision Instances to

Groups of Partitions

GROUP ProvisionTypes = “Definition” INTO an Article

GROUP ProvisionType = “Obligation” ANDProvisionType = “Procedure” AND

ProvisionType = “Derogation” WHERE Argument = “Action” AND

content = “Notification”INTO an Article

AggregationFile Edit View Insert Options … Help

Obligation Addreesee: Controller Action: Notification Counter-party: Garante

Procedure Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: …

Definition Definiendum: Controller Definiens: …

Definition Definiendum: Data bank Definiens: …

Derogation Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: …

ArticleArticle

Paragraph

Paragraph

Paragraph

Paragraph

Paragraph

semantically

Stuctural partitions

Aggregation Criteria Formal and Functional profiles of a “well-

structured” documents

1. [DEFINITION]2. [DEFINITION]3. [DEFINITION]

1. [PENALTY]2. [PENALTY]

correlated partitions

• A legislative text where the functional structure fits well the chosen formal structure;

contain

• “Well-structured” normative documents:

Art. 1.Capo I

…

according to several criteria;

Art. 16

Art. 5.

1. [OBLIGATION, Arguments X,Y]2. [PROCEDURE, Arguments X,Y]3. [DEROGATION, Arguments X,Y]

Semantics StructureDocument Construction

Obligation Procedure DerogationDefinition Definition

Chapter Chapter … Chapter

Document (Law)

Paragraph Paragraph ParagraphParagraph Paragraph

Functional profile

Formal profile

Article Article ArticleArticle

… …

PartOf

Concrete

XML Skeleton Editor view<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

<!DOCTYPE NIR SYSTEM 'nircompleto.dtd'>…

<capo id=“cap1”><disposizioni><analitiche><dsp:definizione><dsp:definiendum>Personal data<dsp:definiendum></dsp:definizione>…

<articolo id=“art1”> </articolo>…</capo>

<capo id=“cap2”><disposizioni><analitiche><dsp:obbligo><dsp:destinatario>Controller</dsp:destinatario><dsp:azione>Notification</dsp:azione>…</dsp:definizione>…

<articolo id=“art7”> </articolo>…</capo>…

Law n. Chapter 1

Art. 1

1. [to be filled]

2. [to be filled]…

Chapter 2Art. 7 1. [to be filled] 2. [to be filled]

3. [to be filled]

Definition(Controller,…)

Definition(Data bank,…)

Obligation(Controller,

Notification,Garante)

Procedure(..,Notification, ..)

Derogation(..,Notification, ..)

GenerationGeneration

• Aims:– Supporting provision generation

• Features:– Provision text generation on the basis of

• The grammar of a specific provision type• The content of the arguments

Grammar of each provision typeGrammar of each provision type• EBNF productions for each type of provisions

1) <ProvisionType> <Definition> | <Competence> | <Obligation><Permission> | <Procedure> | <Penalty> …

2) <Definition> <Definition syntactical structure>3) <Competence> <Competence syntactical structure>…

… <Obligation> <Obligation syntactical structure>

• Each specific syntactical structure is related to the structure of the arguments of each provision type

Benefits of “Generation”Benefits of “Generation”

• More clear legislative texts;

• It limits the ambiguity of texts;

• It helps legislative drafting even for unexpert users as regards legislative technique;

XML Partitions Skeleton and

SemanticsLaw n.

Chapter 1Art. 1

1. [to be filled]

2. [to be filled]…

Chapter 2Art. 7 1. [to be filled] 2. [to be filled]

3. [to be filled]



Obligation(Controller,Notification,Garante)



Law n. Chapter 1

Art. 1

1. "controller" shall mean any natural or legal person

2. "data bank" shall mean any set of personal data …

…

Chapter 2Art. 7 1. A controller .. shall have to notify the

Garante … 2. The notification shall have to be given in

advance …

3. Simplified notifications may omit certain items …



Obligation(Controller,Notification,Garante)



XML Text(Structure and Semantics)

Generation

Uses of the Provision Models

• Drafting LawMakingEnvironment– To provide a semantic guide for planning a new bill.

• Consolidation– Management of amendments;

• Searching MetaSearch– To query a legal information system according to a semantic

point of view;

metaSearch

Text

Provision types

Arguments

Argument keywords

metaSearch

Retrieved provisions

Relatedprovisions

Relatedderogations

Conclusions

• The LME is aimed at supporting the Law-Maker in planning a new bill from a conceptual point of view;

• The classical process of drafting is reverted:

Traditional drafting structure text content semantic markup

Ex PostMeta-draftingsemantic markup structure text contentEx Ante

Documents

Law Making Environment Perspectives