legalruleml message

Subject: Re: [legalruleml] [Ambiguity] Incomplete representation

From: monica.palmirani <monica.palmirani@unibo.it>
To: <legalruleml@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 16:40:16 +0200

Tara,
for sure we will include your proposal (integration of the LegalRuleML
principles document) in the next TC meeting, and by mailing list we will
collect also counter proposals.

Passing to the proposal XML fragment.
LegalRuleML aims to be agile, semantic, expressive and close to the end
user (legal knowledge engineer) mind.
That means for instance to express the rule in readable way

<Rule idReq="rule1" iri="&ruleml;Implies>
<if idReq="imp1" iri="&ruleml;if>
<Atom idReq="atm1"></Atom>
<Atom idReq="atm2"></Atom>
</if>
<then idReq="then1" iri="&ruleml;then>
<Atom idReq="atm3"></Atom>
<Atom idReq="atm4"></Atom>
</then>
</Rule>

mp
Il 01/06/2012 15:25, Tara Athan ha scritto:

First, I would like to continue the "ambiguity" thread, which was
started in the skype chat after the last telecon, in the email. I have
copied the relevant parts of the skype chat at the bottom of this email.

Second, I think I have finally understood something about the
objectives of LegalRuleML.

PROPOSED: to add some text to the principles document, something like
the following ...
****************************************************
Requirements
...
Incomplete Representation. It SHALL be possible for the LegalRuleML
representation of a norm to be incomplete, with the missing
information supplied by reference(s) to (the most specific) portion(s)
of the textual norm.
This is useful for several reasons.

1. Sometimes the textual norm is ambiguous, so a complete
transformation into a single logical representation, which is by
nature unambiguous, is not possible without creating a (legal)
interpretation. Rather than being forced by the syntax to create such
an interpretation, which the LegalRuleML author may not be authorized
to do, they should have the option to NOT represent parts of the norm,
such as the internal details of a literal.

2. Even if the textual norm is not ambiguous, complete and accurate
representation of it in predicate logic may be beyond the capability
of the LegalRuleML author. Representation of the details of a literal
may require reference to a legal ontology. A suitable legal ontology
may not exist, or the LegalRuleML author may not be sufficiently well
trained to carry out the conversion of a natural language text into
such a representation.

3. Accurate representation in predicate logic may require
rearrangement of the grammatical structure of the sentence, leading to
loss of "isomorphism" between the textual representation of the norm
and the LegalRuleML representation. An incomplete representation can
be used to retain isomorphism.

However, an incomplete LegalRuleML representation SHALL contain only
entirely correct and unambiguous information. That is, the loss of
information is due to some information being missing, rather than the
information that is present being approximate or vague. In this way,
an incomplete LegalRuleML representation could be made complete by
adding the missing knowledge. For example, a particular interpretation
of a norm may clarify an ambiguous point. It should be possible to
represent this interpretation monotonically - by adding additional
knowledge to the knowledge base, rather than taking away or replacing
existing knowledge.
******************************************************

I would like to point out that this kind of incomplete representation
is already possible within the RuleML syntax, as presented in
http://ruleml.org/indoo/indoo.html#Programs-as-Data.

In the latest terms, using iri references to refer to the RuleML
meta-model ontology that is currently under development, and the new
proposed "id-ized" terms:

In this construction, an internal identifier "premise1" could be
associated (in metadata) either to an IRI denoting a portion of the
textual norm for an incomplete representation or an IRI denoting a
LegalRuleML representation for complete representation.

*********************************************************************************************************

From Skype Chat...
[5/31/2012 5:53:07 AM] Tara Athan: @Adam - would you also be willing to
help with converting the natural language text, such as Guido's
"complaint" example into Controlled English?
[5/31/2012 6:02:05 AM] Adam Wyner: @Tara - ah, that is a very good
idea. I've done this in the past and have a small paper; there tend to
be a large number of issues that arise along the way. I would also like
to do this for the regulation sample I made available for analysis to
the TC. In the context of our TC discussions, the exercise would be
very useful. Also, for me, it is essential to get publications out of
such exercises, e.g. for conferences such as JURIX. How about if I take
lead on the legislation -> ACE exercise and associated paper write up
(background, surrounding discussions), and add others as co-authors
since we will discuss the analyses and related issues of rule
representation? Would that suit you and others do you think?
[5/31/2012 6:05:50 AM] Tara Athan: That would suit me very well. Once
the text is in ACE, I can easily see how to convert to RuleML, but
getting it into ACE is outside of my experience.
[5/31/2012 6:10:23 AM] Adam Wyner: Good. This sort of task is really
very much needed in the community. Timewise, I'm off to a conference
for a week tomorrow, but during the week I'll get myself set up for
this, make a start, and let you know. There is an ACE -> RuleML
conversion tool, so I'll see how that works. Also, there is ACE in
Protege, for ontology expression.... My experience is that the
translation can go slower than expected since there are interpretation
issues and work arounds; I'll record these issues as they are relevant
to better understand the issues and the task.
[5/31/2012 6:36:24 AM | Edited 6:56:46 AM] Tara Athan: Unfortunately the
webservice translator (http://ruleml.org/translator/translator.jnlp)
from ACE to RuleML is not working at present. It relied on the APE
webservices that has been moved. The API of the webservice has also been
changed. It appears to be a simple matter of changing the URL and a few
query string parameters, so it may be easy to get the translator working
again. The result is in RuleML 0.9, but there are XSLTs available to
convert to RuleML 1.0.

Following the conversion by APE from ACE->DRS, there is an "isomorhpic"
conversion into RuleML, as demonstrated in
http://ruleml.org/translator/exa/own-ACE.ruleml , for example. The code
to perform the DRS -> RuleML conversion is available as a java package,
in binary or source, from http://ruleml.org/translator/

I have not yet tried out the APE package that is available for download
(https://github.com/Attempto/APE/downloads) from the ACE website
(http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/description/) for ACE -> DRS
conversion. Are you familiar with that?
[5/31/2012 7:02:24 AM | Edited 7:02:38 AM] mp: Take care to use ACE in
legal domain, because the risk is to manipulate too much the norm and to
affect the normative meaning per se.
[5/31/2012 7:03:09 AM] mp: this is actually one of the scope of
LegalRuleML: don't manipulate too much the NORM for permitting multiple
interpretation
[5/31/2012 7:03:25 AM | Edited 7:04:07 AM] mp: LKIF-rule also is based
on this principle (Tom Gordon) because the state of the art in legal
domain usually manipulate too much the norm according with other
paradigma
[5/31/2012 7:06:17 AM] Tara Athan: Ideally the legal text would be
written in a controlled natural language to begin with.
[5/31/2012 7:06:27 AM] mp: It is not
[5/31/2012 7:06:59 AM] Tara Athan: That's why I said "ideally"
[5/31/2012 7:10:35 AM] mp: This is a matter of "legal drafting"
techniques. Since 30 years have tried to provide best practices and
methodology, but the political level needs to provide different
messages, sometime ambiguous and vague. Not for an error, but because
ambigous and vagueness guarantee constitutional principles, flexibility
in the interpretation of the legal values, respect of the fundamental
rights over the time (e.g. regime).
[5/31/2012 7:12:42 AM] mp: the idea is to not provide an ideal
formalization of the law, but to use the law with its codification and
its paradigma. This is the only way to provide concrete information
system usable by the legal operators.
[5/31/2012 7:24:41 AM] mp:
http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/blog/semantic-web-journal-special-issue-semantic-web-legal-domain

[5/31/2012 7:27:24 AM] Adam Wyner: Very interesting discussion and
points I understand. I've used ACE locally in the past and will have to
reload it to my current machine, test it out, etc. Tara's problems
noted, so I'll check that out.
[5/31/2012 7:27:54 AM] Adam Wyner: I understand Monica's point about
'normalising norms'. Interesting to emphasise it like this.
[5/31/2012 7:28:33 AM] mp: There is a strong debate in the legal theory
on this topic: the textualism theory is dead [Easterbrook, Frank
H.,Textualism and the Dead Hand, 66 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1119 (1997-1998)]
[5/31/2012 7:29:50 AM] mp: and a lot of constitutional and comparative
law experts are now moving on a different direction called "implicit
law" [Implicit law, Gerald J. Postema (Ed.), Law and Philosophy, Volume
13, Number 3, 361-387, 1994.]
[5/31/2012 7:30:29 AM] Adam Wyner: Almost *all* work, so far as I'm
aware, in NLP is about *disambiguation*, whereas Monica's point is about
maintaining the ambiguity. How best to do this? That said, it is also
not the case that *all* ambiguities are intended to be maintained for
the reasons that Monica gives. I would say that there is much in
legislation that suits unambiguious representation, perhaps the majority
of regulation is this way. RuleBurst/Oracle have a large business in
providing such representations as web-based executable law.
[5/31/2012 7:31:17 AM] mp: in common law not in civil law domain
[5/31/2012 7:31:39 AM] Adam Wyner: It is also the case that legal
drafting guidelines try to specify *out* ambiguity - I just reviewed a
paper for the controlled language workshop about this in a comparative
study.
[5/31/2012 7:35:00 AM] Tara Athan: How much of the ambiguity is in the
vocabulary as opposed to the grammatical structure?
[5/31/2012 7:36:24 AM] Adam Wyner: I understand Monica's point about the
purposes of vagueness and ambiguity, but there is a further side. The
point is that the legislation is then further specified and articulated
in application - the interpretation of the article. Here legal cases
may arise about the interpretation, where parties are in conflict about
the interpretations. This may then be recycled back up to the
legislative drafters for revision of the legislation.... So, at the
level of interpretation, clarity is imposed on the initial legislation
for the purposes set by the context.
[5/31/2012 7:37:49 AM] mp: Ok legalruleml would like to permit
ambiguities using defeasibility logic and not to force the language to a
unique interpretation or an excessive simplification just for
formalizing the legal language. If the legislator prouces ambiguities we
maintain that because in some cases, like the human rights, it is normal
to have vagueness and ambiguities for not blocking the norm to a
particular historical period (e.g. regime, not democratic government,
etc.)
There are 10 years of legal theory on that, and the Sartor, Rotolo,
Governatori etc. school (bologna school) follows this.
[5/31/2012 7:38:01 AM] Adam Wyner: This discussion has already headed
into the long Anglo-Analytic v. Continental-Interpretive debate. Oh,
boy, that's fun! However, at some point, we shall want to scope the
discussion and the analysis.
[5/31/2012 7:38:10 AM] mp: Nice to have this discussion, in order to
clarify the point.
[5/31/2012 7:38:42 AM] mp: Thanks for the elicitation.
[5/31/2012 7:40:04 AM] Tara Athan: [Thursday, May 31, 2012 7:35 AM] Tara
Athan:

<<< How much of the ambiguity is in the vocabulary as opposed to the
grammatical structure?
[5/31/2012 7:40:33 AM] Adam Wyner: And thanks to you for elicitation.
I'm very pro interpretation (as any linguist must be), but I also wear
my syntax-semantics translation into logic hat. Formalisation is not
always the end in itself, but a great tool to understanding; that is,
the effort to formalise makes clearer what we do/don't understand and
precisely why.
[5/31/2012 7:41:06 AM] Adam Wyner: Tara, I think there is going to be
ambiguity in both the lexicon and grammatical structure.
[5/31/2012 7:41:48 AM] Adam Wyner: That said, I think there are going to
be many many many cases where a disambiguated lexicon and grammar are
acceptable.
[5/31/2012 7:43:58 AM] mp: Adam: yes we need a balance. I like the
approach of Adam, but for sure to reduce the NORMS to ACE is not a good
exercise for our purpouses in LegalRuleML that intends to preserve legal
rules defeasible and sometime ambigous
[5/31/2012 7:44:04 AM] Tara Athan: Ambiguity in the lexicon would be
easy to handle- just create a user-defined lexicon that is "open to
interpretation". The sentence would be one step away from controlled
language, with substitution of unambiguous words for the ambiguous ones.
I don't see any possible hope of representing an ambiguous grammatical
structure in RuleML, nor would I want to.
[5/31/2012 7:44:27 AM] Guido Governatori: There should be no ambiguity.
What I mean is that what are there should be no ambiguity about what are
the elements of a norms. The same syntactic structure can be intrepreted
in different way, and the representation should allow for the
specification of the semantics.
[5/31/2012 7:44:31 AM] mp: So ACE is nice for starting, but it is not a
good approach also because in Italian, in Spanish, in France, etc.
doesn't exist (civil law)
[5/31/2012 7:45:20 AM | Edited 7:53:44 AM] Adam Wyner: About this
point: ambiguities using defeasibility logic. Much can and will have
to be said. I think we really ought to be clear amongst ourselves about
'levels' of argumentation. Where we have an unambiguous lexicon and
grammar, we can still formulate arguments and counterarguments. Where
we have an ambiguous lexicon and grammar, we can have another level **of
arguing about the lexicon and grammar/structure/interpretations**.
Larry Solan, a US linguist and law scholar, claims that at least in the
US, ambiguity and vagueness issues are **not** frequent or usually
problematic. But, I know that the European legal tradition is very
different, so maybe the 'meaning' of 'bank' is different in Greece and
Spain than in the UK :-) Smiley is necessary here so you don't take my
'bank' point to heart.
[5/31/2012 7:46:37 AM] mp: Adam: great arguemnts and counterarguments
means to permits to have both and to delegate to the interpretation and
to the concrete facts.
[5/31/2012 7:47:37 AM] Adam Wyner: Guido's point has some assumptions
about natural language syntax and semantics in it. There are several
different approaches, and there is nothing for us to commit to. One
approach says that 'underlying' syntactic structure correlates to one
semantic interpretation; other approaches are not 1-1.
[5/31/2012 7:48:28 AM] Adam Wyner: I agree with Monica's point about
multiple languages. If Grammatical Framework were to have a semantic
translation, then that would be better.... Perhaps that is in the
pipeline.
[5/31/2012 7:49:47 AM] Adam Wyner: I agree with Monica about arguments
about interpretation and concrete facts. Trevor and I also have
discussions and some work on these issues, so I understand the point.
Just that I find it helpful to separate out 'spheres' of what is argued
about and how. We can argue about values, about facts, about proposals
for actions, about expertise....
[5/31/2012 7:50:33 AM] Tara Athan: The use of ACE in an example should
not preclude the application of LegalRuleML to any other means of
representing the legal text in RuleML. But each example must have some
means to do so.
[5/31/2012 7:51:58 AM] Adam Wyner: I think the Norms to ACE exercise
should be an opportunity to make explicit and clear what does/doesn't
work as well as how and why. I'm not claiming that it is correct or all
that needs to be done.
[5/31/2012 7:55:54 AM | Edited 7:56:33 AM] mp: So the only
recommandation is: use ACE for now just for make some examples, but it
is not a methodology adopted in LegalRuleML beacuse we would like to
have also the possibility to manage ambiguities and contradictory norms.
The normalization of the language of the law is very reductive.
[5/31/2012 7:56:41 AM] Guido Governatori: to establish different levels
of burden of proof one can use one and the same rule, but the semantics
used (or the proof theory) could differentiate the conclusions. We do
not have multiple rules, but different ways in which rules are used.
[5/31/2012 7:57:42 AM] Tara Athan: Handling contradictory norms through
defeasible logic is completely compatible with ACE.
[5/31/2012 7:59:43 AM] mp: if you have subordinate clause, dependent
clause and exception of exception, you are forced with ACE to break the
rule/norm in several sub-rules and the effect is different.
[5/31/2012 7:59:56 AM] mp: in Italian law is quite frequent.
[5/31/2012 8:00:09 AM] mp: and also in the European Directive (UE
Parliament)
[5/31/2012 8:00:44 AM] mp: one of the limitation of LKIF-rule was
exactly this point. Now is able to manage exception, but not exception
of exception.
[5/31/2012 8:03:48 AM] Adam Wyner: I agree with this: So the only
recommandation is: use ACE for now just for make some examples. Not
sure what Tara means by this: Handling contradictory norms through
defeasible logic is completely compatible with ACE. ACE has nothing to
say about handling contradition or defeasible logic; on the contrary
(last I looked) it is really only for classical strict reasoning. That
said, we can use ACE to translate multiple sentences which may be
contradictory and then process them outside of ACE. Monica's point
could use with some explicit worked examples with ACE: if you have
subordinate clause, dependent clause and exception of exception, you are
forced with ACE to break the rule/norm in several sub-rules and the
effect is different. Not saying I disagree, just that it should be seen.

@Adam - yes that is what I meant: the defeasibility is "on top of" the
ACE representation, so the expression of defeasibility does not need to
be stated in ACE, just the clauses. I would also be interested to see
the example Monica mentions.
[5/31/2012 10:30:41 AM | Edited 10:30:59 AM] mp: You mean <logop>
example?
[5/31/2012 10:32:06 AM] Tara Athan: I mean the example of exception of
exception.
[5/31/2012 10:32:42 AM] mp: yes modification of modification it also a
case, repeal of repeal
[5/31/2012 10:32:47 AM] mp: ok

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--
===================================
Associate professor of Legal Informatics
School of Law
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
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References:
- [Ambiguity] Incomplete representation
  - From: Tara Athan <taraathan@gmail.com>