legalcitem-legilation sub-committee - tomorrow 18-06 at 11.00 EDT

[monica.palmirani <monica.palmirani@unibo.it>]

Dear colleagues,

during the last week I have studied  little bit ELI syntax for creating a comparison table between URN:LEX, ELI and Akoma Ntoso.
I have some doubts that I would like to share with you. For answering to my doubts tomorrow in our legalcitem-legislation TC we will host John Sheridan, National Archive of UK. If somebody would like to join to this presentation, please end me by email the skype id.

I start to share the basic specifications of ELI, based on FRBR and HTTP:
/eli/{jurisdiction}/{agent}/{sub-agent}/{year}/{month}/{day}/{type}/ {natural identifier}/{level 1…}/{point in time}/{version}/{language}

Comment #1- there is a possible confusion of the use of {year}/{month}/{day}/{type} and {natural identifier}/ considering that all of those elements are optional.
Suppose to have this URI from Italy, Gazette:

/eli/it/ipzs/2014/10/12 --> 2014-10-12 in this case it is the date of the document
/eli/it/ipzs/2014/10 --> in this case 2014 is the year, and 10 is the document identifier but could be confused with the month
/eli/it/ipzs/2014/ --> in this case I don't understand if 2014 is the year or the natural unique identifier. In some country the number of document is unique for all the legal system (e.g. latin america systems).

Comment #2 - The {version} part of the URI represents the _expression_ module in the FRBR model, so a character of separation between work and _expression_ is probably necessary for avoiding confusion, especially between the other temporal/date elements.
In Akoma Ntoso and in URN:LEX the _expression_ part has the prefix @.
/uk/doc/2013-11-21/2013/31/eng@/main

Comment #3- the filed {version} could include arbitrary values not homogeneous among different collections/countries/entities and so failing the interoperability.
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/eli/original/loi/EFIX1234869L/2012/12/29/global 
This is a legifrance URI that has at the end the word "global". Note also the word "original" that is a characteristic of the origin of the document and not the document type (decree, law, etc.).

Comment #4 - Another example of the use of {version}  is the following where the word "prospective" means a particular view in time, that in the future will change. So the URI is not so longer persistent.
http:// www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/23/prospective

Comment #5- Extension to the geographic area. In this case we have "scotland" at the end of the URI in the work part. If in the future the act will be modified and extended to Wales the work URI will change with some problem of persistence.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/69/section/16/scotland
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/69/section/16/scotland-wales

Comment #5 - Linguistic matter.
The _expression_ part of the language is not distinguished by the work part.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/wsi/2014/595/made/welsh
Moreover it is not possible to know if "welsh" is a language or a further specification like the publication.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/nia/2000/5/sld

I hope this could help to the common discussion.

Yours,
Monica

-- 
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Associate professor of Legal Informatics 
School of Law
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna 
C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ 
Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 
I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) 
Tel +39 051 277217 
Fax +39 051 260782 
E-mail  monica.palmirani@unibo.it 
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