FW: Draft of a universal citation standard problem statement

[James E Cabral <jcabral@mtgmc.com>]

ECF TC:

There is interest within OASIS in starting a new TC for defining universal legal citations. The LegalXML Steering Committee believes this TC should clearly be within LegalXML Member Section due to the potential connections and overlaps with other LegalXML TC's, particularly LegalDocument.  We are sharing this draft with all the TCs in the Member Section to generate interest and to help refine the scope of the TC if needed.

Please review the draft charter below and consider:

1. How can we (the members of the ECF TC) support the creation of this TC?  Specifically, are there organizations and individuals we know that should be invited to participate in this effort?
2. What are the potential connection points between this work and the ECF specifications? Do we need to factor this into ECF 4.1 or 5.0?
3. Are there any potential overlaps in scope between the scope described in the draft charter and that of the ECF TC?

Feel free to send your ideas directly to Chet Ensign [mailto:chet.ensign@oasis-open.org] and CC this list.

  Thanks,

Jim Cabral
MTG Management Consultants, L.L.C.
www.mtgmc.com
(206) 442-5010 Phone
(502) 509-4532 Mobile

Helping our clients make a difference in the lives of the people they serve.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Chet Ensign [mailto:chet.ensign@oasis-open.org] 
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2012 12:34 PM
To: Miano, John (LNG-HBE); James E Cabral; Waldt, Dale (LNG-HBE); monica.palmirani; Jamie Clark; Feldkamp, Anthony (LNG-DAY)
Cc: Carol Geyer
Subject: Re: Draft of a universal citation standard problem statement

Folks,

Here is the latest iteration of the citation charter. I have started putting it into the form of a charter for an OASIS Technical Committee so that you can see what this could become. John, I worked in the two points about time based and multiple location content in both the problem statement and the scope. Monica, I put a brief placeholder reference to LegalDocument and Akomo Ntoso into the Similar Work section.

Also note that I tentatively assigned it to our Non-Assertion IPR mode. That is our most open-source IPR mode - essentially ensures that no members participating will subsequently assert any kind of license over the published specification.

Jim, I also indicated that the TC would request affiliation with the LegalXML Member Section.

Please have a look and let me know if you think this is good enough to use as the basis for a broader exploratory conversation with others within OASIS.

Also, if you can suggest thought leaders we might engage in conversation outside of OASIS to build interest and support, please let us all know that as well.

If this looks good for starters, I'll see about setting up a broader phone call for discussion.

Thanks,

/chet

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chet Ensign [mailto:chet.ensign@oasis-open.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 5:45 PM
> To: James E Cabral
> Cc: Waldt, Dale (LNG-HBE); Miano, John (LNG-HBE); monica.palmirani; 
> Jamie Clark
> Subject: Re: Draft of a universal citation standard problem statement
>
> Folks,
>
> As promised, here is a third round of the problem statement for 
> starting a TC for a standard to underlie legal citations. I have added 
> Jamie Clark in as well.
>
> As per our call, this is an opportunity to kick this around a bit 
> internally before going to our other contacts inside OASIS. In 
> particular, is this defining the problem we think is worth solving and 
> is it making a compelling case to those who would read this for the 
> first time.
>
> Let me know what you think. I will take your feedback and put together 
> another round.
>
> ---
> One of the most fundamental principles of legal writing is that every 
> statement of law or fact have a citation for its source. Citations 
> document the strong history of precedent that ensures the continuity 
> and consistent application of the law. Legal documents always include 
> citations within the body of the text and, in fact, would be 
> unacceptable to judges and lawyers without them.
>
> The standards that exist today for constructing citations describe 
> their appearance in print. In particular, for case law, the current 
> system of citation is based on page numbers in a printed case 
> reporters. This worked well in an era when all legal research and 
> argument was conducted using paper and when the sources to be cited 
> were relatively manageable. In today's world of electronic research 
> and drafting and proliferating sources of material, print-centric 
> citation causes a number of problems:
>
> 1) The current system often ties citations to specific vendors. Users 
> of documents must purchase access to a commercial source in order to 
> use what is otherwise open information. In effect, you cannot practice 
> law without paying for the law.
>
> 2) A single citation (i.e. reporter and page number) could point to 
> multiple opinions. To a human reader, the intended reference can be 
> recognized quickly but for an automated system the intended reference 
> is unclear.
>
> 3) Official citations are not available until a printed reporter 
> volume comes out. Meanwhile, unofficial citations tied to the 
> publisher stand in. Reconciling citations between unofficial and 
> official at a later date can be difficult.
>
> 4) Many courts do not have official case reporters and thus no uniform 
> set of citations.
>
> 5) The current databases of citations and cited publications mirror 
> the organization of paper sources and such an organization discourages 
> the development of more open, federated repositories of material.
>
> Currently, there is no accepted standard for how to encode citations 
> in ways that can be used by computers as well as by human readers.
> Over the past few decades, organizations have invested huge sums of 
> money and expertise developing software to scan and interpret text 
> citations into markup that computer systems can then use. These 
> investments have helped to automate access and navigation of legal 
> content, but such computer programs have to work around the 
> limitations of print citations:
>
> 1) They are only as good as the citation variations that the 
> programmers have seen. They do not deal with typographic errors or 
> other variations well. Plus, as soon as someone invents a new citation 
> variation, more code has to be written to handle it.
>
> 2) They are built to meet the needs of the organization that created 
> them and their output is not interoperable with software or content 
> from other organizations.
>
> 3) They are generally built for a specific purpose and their output is 
> not necessarily usable to solve other analytical problems. For 
> example, code written to insert HTML hypertext links into legal 
> opinions will not help someone else in an organization produce tables 
> of authorities from the same body of content.
>
> A non-proprietary and royalty-free citation markup standard designed 
> with the input of subject matter experts and focused on the unique 
> requirements 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 growth of open source legal content and applications. And it can 
> become a foundation for new products and uses that can make the 
> material more 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.
>
> What should a citation standard accomplish?
>
> 1) It should be developed in a transparent, public process that gives 
> adopters the confidence that the needs of all stakeholders have been 
> represented and that the standard will evolve via a controlled process 
> so that their investments in using it will not put at risk.
>
> 2) It should be non-proprietary and not under the control of any one 
> interested party.
>
> 3) It should be royalty-free, allowing any and all interested players 
> to adopt it and use it in their own applications.
>
> 4) It should be purpose-neutral. That is, it should not discriminate 
> against any commercial or non-commercial applications of the standard 
> to material.
>
> 5) It should allow the visual, printed display of a citation to be 
> undisturbed and perform normalization and enhancement "under the 
> covers."
>
> 6) It should address a range of citation types and variations to 
> address a variety of needs and practical domains. For example, it 
> should be capable of traversing or making pinpoint references across 
> different instances, compilations or presentations of the same 
> material; of disambiguating the correct target when a citation points 
> to a location with multiple resources; of supporting automated 
> production and automated consumption of the information.
>
> 7) It should allow the markup to be as simple or as sophisticated as 
> the needs of the users require.
>
> 8) It should be global, supporting the citation requirements of legal 
> domains world-wide.
>
> 9) It should be more than simply an electronic mirror of the print 
> citation formats. It should be designed to distinguish print display 
> from descriptive metadata and linking support data.
>
> 10) It should serve as more than just a way to create hyperlinks. It 
> should be extensible so that it can express information useful for 
> additional processing uses (e.g. generation of alternate citation 
> forms, links to alternate sources, citation analysis).
>
> Would you be interested in discussing the value of starting an 
> initiative within the LegalXML Member Section of OASIS Open to develop 
> a uniform legal citation standard?
>