Re: Court spec issues

[Frank Bennett <biercenator@gmail.com>]

One further issue:

(15) Many reporters cover decisions on a specific court. This hint is
needed to render a correctly formatted printed citation. Should this
information be required, where relevant, in OASIS citation data?

Frank


On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 12:11 AM, Frank Bennett <biercenator@gmail.com> wrote:
> I did some more work on the Legal Resource Registry this weekend. Highlights:
>
> * Rendering and exports can now be controlled via a plugin. This
> permits individual consumers of LRR data (Free Law Project, OASIS,
> MLZ) to refactor the data independently in a repo fork, in the form
> that each requires.
>
> * Japanese courts now show English translations in title attribute
> revealed on cursor rollover.
>
> I'm also close to implementing a dedicated page for neutral citation
> forms in US courts.
>
> While pulling it all together, I spotted a few issues that might
> benefit from discussion. They are listed below, in case they are
> useful to the group.
>
> ***
>
> # Purposing and scope issues
>
> (1) CountListener uses the data for parsing citations out of plain
> text. To validate and disambiguate citations, the date range of
> reporters and the courts covered by them are useful information.
> Should the specification include a framework for handling this
> information, or is it out of scope?
>
> (2) MLZ uses the data for the rendering of citations. For consistency,
> a full controlled list of court names and IDs is useful. Should the
> specification include guidance on the composition of such a controlled
> list, and for casting court IDs?
>
> (3) Should the specification cover the method of citing unreported
> cases for a given court?
>
> (4) Should the specification cover the pinpoint method for individual
> resources (such a page or paragraph)?
>
> (5) Is the aim to assure sufficient information in a cite bundle to
> identify the target resource? Or is it to specify the core information
> needed to fully describe a resource? Or both?
>
>
> # Feature specification issues
>
> Features can have several classes of characteristics. Which of these
> should be specified for a given field in a given source?
>
> (6) Whether the field is required or optional in OASIS cite data for
> that source.
>
> (7) Whether or not the field is *essential* for identifying a specific
> resource (the case name comes to mind as something we could expect to
> required, but which is non-essential if other details are complete).
>
>
> # Multilingual issues
>
> (8) Are transliterations and translations of court and reporter names
> within the scope of the specification? If so, is the aim to assign
> uniform values to individual resources, or only to provide a framework
> for individual cites into which arbitrary values can be written?
>
> (9) Where there is an official translation of a resource (for example,
> a court-sponsored reporting service), should that status of the
> translation be recorded in the cite data?
>
>
> # Court Identifier issues
>
> (10) Is the court identifier scheme of the LRR (loosely based on
> URN:LEX) acceptable?
>
> (10) If so, is it sufficient to adopt a local logic for the segments
> of a court identifier, or is a more rigidly consistent set of
> requirements necessary?
>
> (11) Specifically for the US federal system, is it acceptable to adopt
> the current pattern of setting a named segment for the federal
> jurisdiction, and placing all bodies outside of federal authority in
> the global national namespace? That is, US Supreme Court =
> us;federal;supreme.court; and California Supreme Court =
> us;ca;supreme.court.
>
> (12) When the constitutional foundation of court changes (say, Article
> 1 -> Article 3), should its identifier be changed?
>
> (13) When the name of a court changes (with or without a change in
> constitutional foundation), should its identifier be changed?
>
>
> # Maintenance/workflow issues
>
> (12) Should the specification provide a procedure for recommending and
> adopting changes when new services (such as a newly introduced neutral
> citation form, or the appearance of a new court) are introduced?
>
> ***
>
> Frank