On ontology and epistemology in law

Joost Breuker

OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia

On ontology and epistemology in law

Joost Breuker

Dept. of Computational Legal Theory (LRI)

University of [email protected]

Joost Breuker


Overview

Views & ontologies of law legal theory law as a social system the world of legal documents

Epistemological promiscuity in proposed legal ontologies

Towards integration of legal ontologies e-Court & E-POWER LeXML --> the legal world is ontologically distributed over the common

sense world

Joost Breuker


Views on the legal world (1) Legal theory / legal philosophy

justifying the law (ethics; power & authority; `discovering’ law, the bootstrapping of legality, etc)

some universal legal concepts (Hohfeld, Kelsen,…) legal theory is concerned with epistemological issues

rather than ontological ones the legal decisions and the laws are meta-qualifications about

some case/world. these qualifications do not influence the world as such…but they

may have drastic real world consequences (law enforcement) legal theory is a reflection on practical legal problem solving

(decision making, argument, legal case assessment, legal drafting)

Joost Breuker


Language of Legal Relations (LLR)Hohfeld, 1913 ---> Layman Allen (74-97)

schemas of basic legal concepts as `legal positions’ e.g.

normative : right duty

no-right privilege

competence: power liability

disability immunity legal norms as cascading typed propositions

bootstrapping from basic: duty -typed all (43) relations are `derived’ by varying duty and introducing

power and conditionals

justifying the law as evolving complexity on norms

Joost Breuker


epistemological and ontological views in problem solving (Breuker, 95)

functions in problem solving methods:1. generating solutions (èxplanations’)

2. testing solutions (arguing why solutions are (in)valid/correct)

3. arriving at a conclusion

components of solutions:

completesolution

case model

conclusion

argumentstructure

èxplanation’

`justification’

Joost Breuker


Views on the legal world (2) Law as a social control system

controlling (socially) undesirable behaviour norms: qualifying generic situations as (un)desirable persons & organizations as legal subjects autonomously acting social world --> legal cases: (stories) legal decision making (courts)

• assessing/compensating norm violations • resolving conflict

procedural justification: • reference to documentation (legal sources; `court-filing’ (case); …)• dispute, collecting evidence• procedural law

law enforcement:• monopoly of physical coercion (power) (police, prison, etc.)

legal system itself social organization and roles (judges, prosecutors, police, etc.)

Joost Breuker


FOLaw (functional ontology) normative reasoning (Valente, Breuker & Brouwer, 99)

CASE

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FOLaw (functional ontology) causal reasoning (Valente, Breuker & Brouwer, 99)

What has happened?

Who did what? Who is to be blamed?

CASE

Joost Breuker


proven to be very useful

inference structure for legal reasoning applied and works very well for:

legal knowledge systems (legal case assessment): ON-LINE `legal assessment shell’.

analyzing regulations (eg for educational systems) legal information retrieval

• CLIME project: 15.000 rules (norms) about ship `classification’ include international sea law (Winkels et al, 2002)

developing representation & inference on• norms (deontic operators): see Valente et al, 99 (no deontic logic!)• …responsibility….(Lehmann, forthcoming)

Joost Breuker


but…

mainly epistemology…(except for the world knowledge!) other examples of legal core èpistemologies’:

Visser & van Kralingen (1995):• frames for norms, actions, concepts, etc. • metadata for DB fields

Mommers (àpplied legal epistemology’ 2002): • disentangling epistemology from ontology?

NB: for SW etc epistemological frameworks may be as useful as ontologies! they shouldn’t be mixednb 2: tasks, problem solving methods, arguments etc are NOT

parts of ontologies but epistemic frames!

Joost Breuker


Mixing O & E in a core for law(Mommers, 2002)

knowledge based model of the legal domain

ontologyof law 1

epistemicroles

ontological status layers

ontologyof law 2

ontologyof law 3

Joost Breuker




ontologyof law 1

epistemicroles


ontologyof law 2

ontologyof law 3

Joost Breuker




ontologyof law 1

epistemicroles


ontologyof law 2

ontologyof law 3

Joost Breuker


legal concepts as subtypes of `regular’ concepts…(1)

Joost Breuker


legal concepts as subtypes of `regular’ concepts…(2)

Joost Breuker


intermediary summary

the main business of law is justification of decisions/power epistemological frameworks rather than ontologies

• perfect for reasoning architectures (FOLaw), but

• not one has been expressed in a KR/DL formalism!

from exclusively normative to some subtyping of `regular’ (top) ontologies (see also Gangemi et al. 2001)

Joost Breuker


Views on the legal world (3)Legal information serving

access to legal documents/information is a major requirement in e-government & e-business on the SW

document standards for the WWW/SW: XML-Schemas & tagging/annotation LegalXML: USA (part of OASIS) LeXML: Europe (…informal…)

LeXML views on documents: form/structure:

• formal requirements (eg. standard phrases in Dutch legislation)• sectioning

role/function/legal-status content/topics….

Joost Breuker


lexml.nl: legal ontologies as part of the `dictionary’ (Boer et al, 2002)

Joost Breuker


use of ontologies in (legal) information serving

Tagging/annotation manual: ontology as consistent standard vocabulary semi-automatic:

• instantiation/identification (“the judge” --> <judge-1>)• interpretation: ?? NLP --> instantiating RDF-triples etc ==>

abstracts (SW)

Information retrieval expanding query (CLIME; Winkels et al, 2002) clustering return set of documents by using additional

information (eg multiple classification, ranges )

Joost Breuker


what kind of ontologies?(example: e-Court)

documents: criminal trial hearings (transcriptions) document-(meta-) data (identifiers etc.)--> LeXML sectioning (-> tagging):

• formal trial phases ---> formal criminal law• nature of text/discourse: ---> dialogue

type of dialogue (interrogation; dispute) …argument-types/structure?

turn-taking (agents/roles)

topics (content)• common sense events/things….---> Wordnet?• criminal law (substantial, formal)

e-COURTIST-2000-28199

Joost Breuker


Ontology of Dutch criminal law: agents

Agent:

PersonNatural person

Juristic personCompanyAssociationFoundation

OrganisationPublicMinistry of JusticePublic AuthorityPublic servicePublic-organisation-function

AdministrationProcureur-GeneralPublic Prosecutor Office

InvestigationPolice

Adjudication Court

Court-type (jurisdiction)Criminal court

Court-levelCantonal Court Court of appealSupreme Court

Private

Joost Breuker


Ontology of Dutch criminal law: roles

Role:

Legal roleVictimPublic servant

JuridicalJudicial

JudgePresiding judge

ProsecutionPublic Prosecutor

InvestigatingInvestigating officerInvestigating judge

AdministrativeMinister of JusticeLaw clerk (griffier)Court bailiffRegistrar

Legal representativeGuardian (representing the victim)Prosecution (representing the state)Defence counsel (representing the defendant)

DefendantPrincipalAccessory

OffenderConvict

WitnessAnonymous witness

Expert

Joost Breuker


Ontology of Dutch criminal law: criminal actionsAction:Criminal offence: Felony

Offence against the security of the stateOffences against Royal DignityOffences against Heads of Friendly Nations and otherInternationally Protected PersonsOffences against Public OrderDuellingOffences Endangering the General Safety of Persons or PropertyOffences Against Public AuthorityPerjuryCounterfeiting and Falsifying

of Coinage, Government Notes and Bank Notesof Stamps, Seals and Marks

……..misdemeanour

Lesser offences related to safety of Persons and PropertyLesser offences related to Public OrderLesser Offences Related to Public Authority….

PunishmentPrincipal punishment

ImprisonmentFor lifeDeterminate period

DetentionCommunity serviceFine

Joost Breuker


what kind of ontologies?(example 2: E-POWER)*

goal: information management for drafting tax legislation documents: tax legislation

document-(meta-) data (identifiers etc.)--> LeXML sectioning (-> tagging):

• sectioning: chapter/article/`full-phrase’ .)--> LeXML • nature of text/discourse: ---> individual statements, many

references topics (content)

• tax law (substantial, formal)

ist 28125

*) European Programme for an Ontology based Work Environment for Regulations and legislation

Joost Breuker


agentperson

natural_personjuristic_person....

organization....role...

public_servantjuridical

tax_inspectorfinancial_crime_police_officer...judicial

judge...physical_object...

documentform

tax_form...regulation

tax_regulationphysical_quantity

amountmoney (M)income (M)...

action.....declaring_income_tax

procedure....appealing_legal

parts of ontology for tax law

Joost Breuker


typical legal documents

regulations statutes, codes, provisions, rules… contracts

forms and requests (citizen -> administration) exhibits and declarations (criminal law) transcripts of hearings (court sessions)

Joost Breuker


What’s in a regulation

Dutch traffic code (RVV-90) art. 3 Vehicles should keep to the right art. 6 Two bicycles may ride next to each other art. 33 A trailer should have lights at the back

incoherent & inconsistent regulations are not typical text:

they are `comments’ (legal qualifications) on some generic situations that may exist in some implicit (legal) world

Joost Breuker


ontology of the (legal) world of traffic

action

traffic-term

vehicleagent

movepedestrian motorizedindicate

lane

part ofroad

driver

changedirection

position

relative

traffic consists of actions of drivers with vehicles that change positionson the road

Joost Breuker


legal ontology: layers?

legal domain specific a (legal) world (traffic, income, crime, …) but overlap between domains eg roles, documents, etc

law specific: document: regulation qualification: right --> forbidden --> violation

liability common-sense:

event, intention, object, etc. we better start from a `regular’ upper ontology for

consistency integration knowledge acquisition support…

Joost Breuker


e-COURT Upper (ECU) vs SUMO….

Joost Breuker


major distinctions

mental world ( analogous to physical world) ambiguous objects (eg agent): multiple classification (no `mind-body’

problem…) representation-relation of mental objects to physical objects (eg

concept --> symbol) mental_processes & mental_objects as ontological reification of

epistemic processes (eg reason, argument,…) occurrence: events & states as INSTANCES_OF (mental,

physical) processes and actions time/space: define positions of events/states physical world: processes as changes of matter/energy (..both..

i.e. multiple view but distribution..) not yet: life ( organic_matter!)

Joost Breuker


conclusions

law is a typical èpistemic business’; not an ontologically founded one

legal domains have ramifications all over the common sense world

an upper ontology is very welcome: NOT TO IMPOSE STANDARDS!

• standards are to be expected & required for typical legal document description (LeXML,..)

to support distributed, local development of legal domain ontologies for:

• public access to law• harmonization of (European) law

Joost Breuker


Documents

On ontology and epistemology in law