Computer representation of legal documents

1. Computer representation of legal documents Fabio Vitali University of Bologna May 2nd, 2000

2. “When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less” • Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

3. A few words of caveat • Natural languages • Technical languages • Computer languages • Alphabet soup

4. A scenario • A legal drafter is writing a contract. He is writing a structured text with clauses. Many of these clauses refer explicitly to articles of national, international and local laws. Some these laws have changed since they were first approved. The contract is put on the Web for all the interested parties to read and approve it. Then it is printed for signatures and added to the firms’ electronic collection of active contracts.

5. Purposes of computer representation • Printing • Browsing • Searching • Connecting • Reusing • Understanding (not in our scope today)

6. Summary • We will discuss some issues regarding computer support in: • Structuring legal documents • Referring to legal documents • Presenting legal documents

7. Structuring documents • The World Wide Web • Markup languages • HTML, SGML, XML • XML for legal documents

8. The World Wide Web (1) • The Web was originally the result of some protocols and languages: • HTML • HTTP • URL • Software: browsers and servers

9. The World Wide Web (2) • Several additions make the current Web complex • Server-side: DB connectivity, CGI applications, servlets, PHP, etc. • Computation: javascript, Vbscript, Java applet, embedded objects • Presentation: CSS, HTML 4, etc. • New media: video, audio, VR, etc.

10. A simple document

11. Marking documents up • Markup as the means to make explicit an interpretation of a text • Text vs. binary markup • Types of markup • Punctuational and presentational markup • Procedural markup • Descriptive and referential markup

12. The mere content • threemeninaboattosaynothingofthedogjeromekjeromefvbookschapter1threeinvalidssufferingsofgeorgeandharrisavictimtoonehundredandsevenfatalmaladiestherewerefourofusgeorgeandwilliamsamuelharrisandmyselfandmontmorencyweweresittinginmyroomsmokingandtalkingabouthowbadwewerebadfromamedicalpointofviewimeanofcoursewewereallfeelingseedyandweweregettingquitenervousaboutit

13. With punctuational markup • Three men in a boat • To say nothing of the dog! • Jerome K. Jerome • FV Books • Chapter 1 • Three invalids - Sufferings of George and Harris - A victim to one hundred and seven fatal maladies - … There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course. We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it...

14. A binary specific format

15. A specific text format

16. HTML

17. XML (1)

18. XML (2) • Extensible Markup Language, 1996, W3C • Descriptive markup • Text format • Emphasizes structures • Meta-markup • Standard but with strong industry support • Document types and DTDs

19. XML for legal documents • Meta-markup: many document types • Descriptive markup: elements are described according to their meaning, not aspect • Structure: legal documents are heavily structured, and can easily be referred to according to their structures • Duration: legal documents are supposed to last for long periods, longer than the average Web page.

20. XML for legal documents • Italian laws are composed of • A main heading • A preamble (not always) • A structure of articles and clauses, divided in “parte”, “libro”, “titolo”, “capo”, “sezione”, “paragrafo”, then in “articolo”, then in “comma“ (actual law clauses). Each of them is numbered according to specific rules. • A conclusion (not always) • Zero or more attachments

21. XML for legal documents • <codice> • <testata> • <estremi id="l0001985022800047"> • <tipodoc>LEGGE </tipodoc> • <datadoc>28 febbraio 1985</datadoc>, • <enumdoc>47</enumdoc> • </estremi> • <epigrafe> TITLE OF LAW </epigrafe> • </testata> • <articola> • <capo id="l0001985022800047p00al00at00ac01a"> • <canum><numelem>CAPO I</numelem></canum> • <catitolo>TITLE OF HEADING I </catitolo> • <articolo id="l0001985022800047ar0001a"> • <grnumart><anum>1.</anum></grnumart> • <rubrica>TITLE OF ARTICLE 1</rubrica> • <comma id="l0001985022800047ar0001ac001a"> • <corpo> BODY OF CLAUSE 1 OF ARTICLE 1 </corpo> • </comma> • <comma id="l0001985022800047ar0001ac002a"> • <corpo> BODY OF CLAUSE 2 OF ARTICLE 1 </corpo> • </comma> • <comma id="l0001985022800047ar0001ac003a"> • <corpo> BODY OF CLAUSE 1 OF ARTICLE 1 </corpo> • </comma> • </articolo> ... • </capo> ... • </articola> • </codice>

22. Referring to legal documents • References are the moving blood of any working legal system. • Implicit vs explicit references • Modifications and references • Human and computer references • Synonyms and identifiers

23. URLs, URNs • URLs: universal locators of resources • The specific method of access is explicit http://www.cs.unibo.it/~fabio/laws/1985/0047#a11 • http://protocol for access • www.cs.unibo.it/domain name of web site • ~fabio/laws/1985/0047local name of resource • a11internal location within resource • URNs: universal names of resources • The name is stable and reliable. It is converted to a URL when needed • urn://nir/L198502280047#a11

24. XPath • A stable way to refer to locations within resources: • Specific internal names • Specific nodes identified via tree navigation • Specific text chunks identified via absolute addresses urn://nir/L198502280047#a11 Element called “a11” within document urn://nir/L198502280047#2/3/5 5th element within 3rd element within 2nd element of resource urn://nir/L198502280047#xpointer(/doc/chapter[5]/section[2]) 2nd section of 5th chapter of element doc within the resource

25. XLink (1) • A way to express sophisticated hypertext links (inter-document relationships) • Simple links: point-to-point, local, directional, embedded • Extended inline links: point-to-point, local, multidirectional, embedded links • Extended out-of-line links: point-to-point, remote, multidirectional, external links

26. XLink (2) • <extlink xl:type=“extended” xl:role=“extlink” xl:title=“prova”> <ruolo xl:type=“arc” xl:from=“one” xl:to=“two”/> <ruolo xl:type=“arc” xl:from=“one” xl:to=“three”/> <local xl:type=“resource” xl:role=“one”> Click here </local> <url xl:type=“locator” xl:role=“two” xl:href=“http://www.sitetwo.com/”/>l:type=“locator” xl:role=“three”xl:href=“http://www.sitothree.com/”/> </extlink> • <ruolo xl:type=“arc” xl:from=“one” xl:to=“two”/> <ruolo xl:type=“arc” xl:from=“one” xl:to=“three”/> • <local xl:type=“resource” xl:role=“one”> Click here </local> <url xl:type=“locator” xl:role=“two” xl:href=“http://www.sitetwo.com/”/> <url xl:type=“locator” xl:role=“three” xl:href=“http://www.sitothree.com/”/>

27. URNs and XLink for legal documents • Support for absolute references • Regardless of modifications • Support for specific references • Modifications are specific and local • Support for automatic conversion between human, traditional references and computer, Web-based references • “See clause 3 of article 5 of law 47 of 1985 • urn://nir/L198502280047#xpointer(/art/articolo[5]/comma[3])

28. Presenting legal documents • Legal documents must be transformed in order to be read by humans and to be used. • Printed and on-line versions • Inclusions and quotations in other legal documents • Summaries and comments by researchers • (semi-)automatic generation of modified texts

29. CSS • Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) adds rendering semantics to existing XML documents. • Used to specify that a text node is a block element, or an inline element, and what appearance attributes to give it. • comma { element-type: block; font-size: 100%; text-align: left; margin-right: 5px; margin-left: 5px; color: #0000FF }

30. XSLT and XSL • Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) transforms an XML element with structural semantics into another XML document with rendering (or other) semantics. • Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a set of elements with specific rendering semantics. Fo:block is a paragraph, while fo:inline is an inline element • XSLT transforms any XML document into either an XSL or an HTML document. We can use to specify that an element in the source XML document is a fo:block element or a <P> element

31. XSLT - an example • <xsl:template match=”articolo"> • <HR/> <H2> <xsl:value-of select=”grnumart"/> - <xsl:value-of select=”rubrica"/></H2> • <xsl:apply-templates /> • </xsl:template> • Each element in the source element is matched with the best fitting template, and the output is written in the destination document.

32. Two case studies • There are several experiences in Italy on using XML for the law. Two will be examined: • Zanichelli publisher • Norme in rete (http://www.normeinrete.it/)

33. Zanichelli • A project born in 1996 using SGML instead of XML (but with XML in mind for evolution) • An SGML DTD for laws and normative documents of all kinds • An SGML database with the whole civil and criminal code, and some 400 additional laws and normative documents • A converter for the selection of the laws for print • A converter for the selection of laws for a CD

34. http://www.normeinrete.it/ • A project born in 2000 from a joint initiative of Italian Senate, Chamber and the Prime Minister’s office. • A working group identifying the best XML tools for legal drafting and verification • A working group delivering a DTD to constrain and shape future laws • A working group delivering URNs for all present and past normative documents. • A working group delivering meta-information sets for Italian laws and other official documents.

35. Conclusions • Representing legal documents with computers • Useful for quotations, references, access, evolution • Requires sophisticated languages more than tools • URNs and XPaths for correct references • XML for correct structuring • XSLT for transformation into usable documents.

36. References (1) • Case studies • Norme in rete: http://www.normeinrete.it/ • Zanichelli: http://www.zanichelli.it/ • XML • J. Bosak, XML, Java, and the future of the Web, http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/sun-info/standards/xml/why/xmlapps.htm • T. Bray, J. Paoli, C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 1998, http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml • T. Bray, The annotated XML Specification,1998, http://www.xml.com/axml/testaxml.htm

37. References (2) • XSLT • James Clark, XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0, W3C Recommendation 16 November 1999, http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt • E.R. Harold, XSL Transformations (XSLT), capitolo 14 del libro XML Bible, disponibile in rete: http://metalab.unc.edu/xml/books/bible/updates/14.html • James Clark, XSLT in Perspective, http://www.jclark.com/xml/xslt-talk.htm • XPointer e XLink • S. DeRose, E. Maler, D. Orchard, B. Trafford, XML Linking Language (XLink), W3C Working Draft , 21 February 2000, http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/ • J. Clark, S. DeRose, XML Path Language (XPath), Version 1.0, W3C Recommendation 16 November 1999, http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath • S. DeRose, R. Daniel Jr., E. Maler, XML Pointer Language (XPointer), W3C Working Draft 6 December 1999, http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr