RE: [docbook-publishers] Re: [DocBook-publishers] Food for thought: Legal/Govt citations

["Hanratty, John (LNG-LON)" <john.hanratty@lexisnexis.co.uk>]

For print the markup requirements are minimal, usually involving some
italics. For online, there is a huge amount of metadata captured around
citations. I'm not allowed to share samples as our citation markup
(unlike most of our DTDs) is not in the public domain. What I would say
is that docbook needs a citation module if it doesn't already have one:
forgive my ignorance, I've not actually used docbook in anger.

Most legal publishers, I suspect, keep databases of known citations,
and, I suspect, use pattern matching to add detailed citation markup to
enable cross-reference linking, also the automated compilation of tables
of cites, tables of cases referred to, statutes referred to, etc. Based
on the citation pattern one can infer the issuing body (e.g. European
Court of Justice (ECJ), European Court of Human Rights, House of Lords,
Supreme Court, etc. The issuing authority is usually included in the
metadata around the citation. The addition of all this metadata around a
citation is invariobly automated, based on matching recognizable
citation patterns. It's too onerous and complex for a human being, and a
single keystroke error will break the all-important hyperlink to the
cited enactment, case, judgment, treaty, rule, etc.

In terms of cases, there is the need to record when a judgment is
overturned (goes from being "good law" to being "bad law") - remember
that the UK has no written constitution, and therefore precedent is
all-important. In the US searching for a case citation is called
Shepardizing (see
http://www.19thcircuitcourt.state.il.us/bkshelf/l_libr/citation_searchin
g.htm)

The act or case name is not usually considered part of the citation. In
addition to publishers' proprietary citation systems there is the
"official cite" or "neutral cite" included by the state in its published
report of the case/piece of legislation, etc. There is no legal
publishing equivalent of CrossRef, the academic journals cross-citing
service (a joint venture between publishers designed to increase
revenues for all by enabling persistent links from one publisher's
content to another's).

Hope this helps.

John Hanratty 
Senior XML Analyst 
LexisNexis UK
Tel: 0207 4002656
Blackberry: 07780 763204
email: john.hanratty@lexisnexis.co.uk

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-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Pawson [mailto:dave.pawson@gmail.com] 
Sent: 07 November 2007 07:43
To: Scott Hudson
Cc: docbook-publishers@lists.sourceforge.net;
docbook-publishers@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [docbook-publishers] Re: [DocBook-publishers] Food for thought:
Legal/Govt citations

On 07/11/2007, Scott Hudson <scott.hudson@flatironssolutions.com> wrote:

> For example, what is the best practice for marking up the following:
> According to the Bank Holding Company Act (12 USC 1841(c)(2)(F))...
>
> Perhaps there is already support for this in DocBook, but I would 
> guess that some additional markup would be beneficial.

What is 'normal' presentation format, i.e. could we work back from that?


>
> Thoughts? Answers?


Rather than phrases, it's numbering that would have me concerned,
especially if it's automated?

Seemingly each govt, possibly each department, seems to have some crazy
numbering scheme which may have seemed logical years ago but ....


Lots of examples, then something like the docbook toc layout perhaps?

book
 sect1 1
 sect2 1.1
   section 1.1.1
etc
To give some flexible guidance to the stylesheets as to what form the
numbering could/should take.

regards




--
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

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