Re: [legalcite-markup-discuss] Draft of a charter for the Legal Citation (LegalCite) Technical Committee

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

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Chet,

I assume that all of the "highly visible" similar projects have
advocates if not adherents.

To the extent there are bodies of legal materials using other markup
models, a mapping between existing markup models and the TC's model
could ease the acceptance of the latter in the marketplace.

Thinking with a mapping that metadata for the Legalcite TCs markup
could inure to the benefit of citatons held in other systems.

Any thoughts about such mappings or at least a mechanism to support
such mappings being among the TC's deliverables?

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

On 10/29/2013 02:14 PM, Chet Ensign wrote:
> All,
> 
> I have been working on the draft for a charter for the proposed
> Legalcite Technical Committee. The draft below incorporates
> feedback from several people, especially changes to make clear that
> the scope is the markup model (conceptual model, vocabulary,
> metadata definitions and syntatical structure) not print format
> recommendations and changes to get rid of any perceived US-centric
> bias.
> 
> Please have a look and let us know what you think. We are getting
> close to the point where the charter can be formally submitted to
> OASIS and the TC started up. I anticipate - given the timeline of
> events necessary to start a Technical Committee and the impending
> holidays - that a first meeting would be set for sometime in
> January of 2014.
> 
> --- Charter draft ---
> 
> Section 1: Charter
> 
> (1)(a) TC Name
> 
> OASIS Legal Citation (Legalcite) TC
> 
> (1)(b) Statement of Purpose
> 
> One of the fundamental principles of legal writing is that every
> statement of law or fact must carry a citation to its source.
> Citations document the history of precedent that ensures the
> continuity and consistent interpretation and application of the
> law. Legal documents almost always include citations within the
> body of the text and, in fact, would be unacceptable without them.
> 
> The specifications for constructing citations that exist today vary
> across jurisdictions and languages. Work has been done on several
> initiatives to develop markup standards for citations (see list at 
> http://tinyurl.com/legalCite-DataModel) yet the focus of many
> efforts and much of the analysis has been on the form of the
> citation on the page itself. In today’s world of electronic
> publishing, online research and proliferating sources of material,
> the lack of a rich markup language vocabulary and syntax presents a
> number of problems, key among them:
> 
> 1) Print citations can't be machine-processed with 100%
> reliability, e.g. a citation may point to a page with complex text
> that requires a human reader to decipher the intended target. A
> markup standard could enable precise processing.
> 
> 2) There is no way to encode improvements in quality and accuracy
> into a citation over time so publishers and other users must
> reprocess the text citations over and over. With a markup standard,
> a publisher could enrich a citation with metadata that would
> persist, enabling many downstream applications to work on the data
> instead of re-fixing it.
> 
> 3) There is no way to encode consistent metadata behind print
> citations that may vary from one jurisdiction to the next. A markup
> standard would allow normalization and enhancement to be done in
> the tagging, leaving the print citation untouched.
> 
> 4) There is no way to enrich the citation with additional metadata
> that can assist authors, editors, or readers in using the citation.
> A markup standard could allow information to be captured beyond
> what was needed for linking.
> 
> 5) There is no support for extracting citations into databases or
> even something as simple as tables of authority. Standard markup in
> documents would allow citations to be harvested simply by
> processing the embedded tagging in the document.
> 
> A non-proprietary, royalty-free, open citation markup standard
> designed with the input of subject matter experts and focused on
> the requirements of a broad cross-section of the legal community
> can provide the foundation for creating enriched content that can
> be useful across multiple groups of interested parties. It can
> provide a basis for creating more powerful editorial and data
> handling tools for legal content. It can support the development of
> federated citation databases that help connect legal professionals
> to resources and ensure the persistence of cross-references over
> time. It can support the growth of open source legal content and 
> applications. And it can become a foundation for new products and
> services of value to everyone in the legal community.
> 
> Just as web browsers and related types of software have become core
> parts of our interactive computer environment thanks to the
> foundation of HTML, a legal citation markup standard can enable a
> new generation of tools and capabilities benefiting all players and
> allowing commercial entities to deliver new generations of products
> and services limited only by their imagination and ability to
> innovate.
> 
> Around the world, the number of officially binding electronic
> resources for legislation, case law and official documents is
> increasing. Relying solely on the printed text of citations will
> add to the cost and burden of researching and complying with
> increasingly complex legal issues. A uniform approach to legal
> citations is crucial for the long-term accessibility and 
> preservation of legal content.
> 
> (1)(c) Scope
> 
> The Legalcite TC will develop an open standard for machine-readable
> tagging of legal citations. Specifically, the standard will provide
> a conceptual model, vocabulary, metadata definitions and syntatical
> structure that:
> 
> - Enables cites to be richly tagged while leaving the visible text
> of the citation undisturbed.
> 
> - Works for a broad variety of legal content types including court
> cases, legislation, regulations, parliamentary documents and legal
> treatises.
> 
> - Supports citations as used in different countries and
> jurisdictions.
> 
> - Allows other metadata to be associated with citations for
> purposes beyond just linking.
> 
> The TC will also define use cases, overviews, sample data sets and
> such other non-normative content as can help guide implementers and
> users to develop and adopt of the standard.
> 
> Out of scope:
> 
> The TC will not specify how citations should be processed nor
> define specific tools for citations. For example, it will provide
> semantics for describing the information needed to link citations,
> but it will not specify how such linking should be implemented in
> systems.
> 
> The TC will not specify nor make assumptions about how and where in
> the lifecycle of legal materials the citation markup would be added
> to content. In particular, it will not specify or assume that
> citation markup is added during original content creation.
> 
> The TC will not specify prescriptions for citation repositories or
> for other types of implementations that could be built on the
> foundation of the standard.
> 
> (1)(d) Deliverables
> 
> The TC will produce:
> 
> 1. An open legal citation markup standard within 12 to 18 months of
> the first meeting.
> 
> 2. A list of business cases and use cases to be supported by the
> standard within 12 to 18 months of the first meeting. The list may
> include use cases regarding the treatment of legacy materials.
> 
> 3. Optionally, such other explanatory, educational or supporting
> material as the TC may choose to produce to support the overall
> standard, timing to be determined as the TC progresses.
> 
> (1)(e) IPR Mode
> 
> The TC will operate under the Non Assertion IPR mode as defined in
> the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy effective 15
> October 2010.
> 
> (1)(f) Audience
> 
> Because citations are fundamental to the practice and application
> of the law, the audience for this work is extensive:
> 
> - Developers creating products for the legal market, including the
> open source and open government communities.
> 
> - Legal publishers and service providers
> 
> - Law librarians
> 
> - Academics, especially those with an interest in legal analytics
> 
> - Court, legislative and administrative staffs, especially those
> charged with performing research and drafting documents as well as
> government IT staff who must support them
> 
> (1)(g) Language
> 
> The TC shall carry out its activities in English.
> 
> Section 2: Additional Information
> 
> (2)(a) Identification of Similar Work
> 
> A substantial amount of work has been done on legal citations. The 
> following lists some of the more highly visible initiatives.
> 
> - The OASIS LegalDocumentML TC is based on the Akoma Ntoso ( 
> http://www.akomantoso.org/) specification produced under the
> UN/DESA’s Africa i-Parliament Action Plan. The specification
> includes a URI-based syntax for legal citations and a naming
> convention. ( 
> http://www.akomantoso.org/release-notes/akoma-ntoso-2.0-schema/naming-conventions-1)
>
>  - The IETF has published an Internet Draft titled “A Uniform
> Resource Name (URN) Namespace for Sources of Law (LEX).” The
> document provides a URN convention for “identifying, naming,
> assigning, and managing persistent resources in the legal domain.”
> ( https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-spinosa-urn-lex/)
> 
> - The Council of Ministers of the European Union have published 
> ‘Conclusions’ regarding a proposed European Case Law Identifier or
> ECLI (see http://tinyurl.com/ln3tx3l ) and a European Legislation
> Identifier or ELI (see http://tinyurl.com/cpv6hg4 )to support the
> development of a semantic web of official gazettes. ( 
> http://legalinformatics.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/st17554-en11.pdf)
>
>  - The CEN Workshop on Open XML interchange format for legal
> documents has developed CEN MetaLex, a standard for the way sources
> of law and references to sources of law are to be represented in
> XML. (http://www.metalex.eu/ ).
> 
> - The UK National Archives uses Crown Legislation Markup Language
> (CLML) to make data available over Legislation.gov.uk. ( 
> https://github.com/lewismc/clml-schemas/blob/master/CLML%20Schemas/README.txt)
>
>  - Juriconnect, is a consortium of government bodies, legal
> publishers and academia in the Netherlands produced Juriconnect
> Standard BWB (Basis Wetten Bestand) is the basis for referring to
> parts of regulations. ( 
> http://www.juriconnect.nl/downloadreg.asp?bestand=Juriconnect%5FStandaard%5FBWB%5F1%5F3%2Epdf&type=pdf)
>
>  - “PRESTO: A WWW Information Architecture for Legislation and
> Public Information Systems” by Rick Jelliffe  describes a
> methodology that governments could use to provide access to
> documents at any level of granularity, in particular legislation
> and regulations. ( 
> http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2008-02-26.html#cite7 )
> 
> In addition, much work has been done on standards for structuring
> and representing citations and much has been written on the
> problems of legal citation and how to address them. An extensive
> list of these resources can be found at
> http://tinyurl.com/legalCite-DataModel.
> 
> (2)(b) First TC Meeting
> 
> First meeting date TBD –
> 
> (2)(c) Ongoing Meeting Schedule
> 
> (2)(d) TC Proposers
> 
> Richard Beatch (rbeatch@bloomberg.net), Bloomberg LP James Cabral
> (jcabral@mtgmc.com ), MTG Management Consultants, LLC Ken Hirsh
> (ken.hirsh@uc.edu ), American Association of Law Libraries John
> Joergensen (jjoerg@andromeda.rutgers.edu ) Rutgers School of Law 
> Laurel Shifrin (laurel.shifrin@lexisnexis.com), LexisNexis Monica
> Palmirani (monica.palmirani@unibo.it), University of
> Bologna-CIRSFID
> 
> (2)(e) Primary Representatives' Support
> 
> 
> (2)(f) TC Convener
> 
> The TC will be convened by John Joergensen of the Rutgers School of
> Law – Newark.
> 
> (2)(g) OASIS Member Section
> 
> The TC intends to request affiliation with the OASIS LegalXML
> Member Section.
> 
> 

- -- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Technical Advisory Board, OASIS (TAB)
Former Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
Twitter: patrickDurusau
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