An OWL ontology library representing judicial interpretations

Abstract

Abstract. The article introduces a formal model of legal knowledge that relies on the metadata contained in judicial documents, and JudO, a judicial ontology library that represents the interpretations performed by a judge when conducting legal reasoning towards the adjudication of a case. For the purposes of this application, judicial interpretation is intended in the restricted sense of the acts of judicial subsumption performed by a judge when considering a material instance (a token in Searle's terminology), and assigning it to an abstract category (type). JudO is centred on a core ontology featuring some judicial ontology patterns, which take advantage of constructs introduced by OWL2, in order to provide appropriate legal semantics, while retaining a strong connection to source documents (i.e. fragments of legal texts). The final goal of the framework is to detect and model of jurisprudence-related information directly from the text, and to perform shallow reasoning on the resulting knowledge base. JudO also constitutes the basis for the application of argumentation patterns through reasoning on a set of rules, which represent the grounding of judicial interpretations in deontic and defeasible logics.Keywords: legal knowledge modeling, OWL2, ontology design patterns, case-based legal reasoning, judicial interpretation «I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance».-Franz Kafka, The Trial.

Network analysis in the legal domain: a complex model for European Union legal sources

“…As an example, it will be easier for lawmakers to monitor the effect of a possible change in the whole normative system, thus taking appropriate actions. In such a system, the use of domainspecific ontologies [55] and linked data techniques [56] would further enrich the added value of Legislation Network.…”

Semantic Web for the Legal Domain: The next step

“…These kinds of initiatives by the aforementioned and other local, regional, and national governments (Catalonia, 29 France, 30 Italy, 31 the Netherlands, 32 Singapore, 33 etc.) show how the adoption of Semantic Web technologies in the administrative domain is widespread even for concrete uses and applications.…”

“…In "An OWL Ontology Library Representing Judicial Interpretations" [30], Marcello Ceci and Aldo Gangemi introduce an OWL 2 DL ontology library making it possible to describe the interpretations a judge makes of the law while engaging in the legal reasoning on which basis a case is adjudicated. This ontology library is based on a theoretical model and on some specific patterns that exploit some new features introduced by OWL 2, and it provides meaningful legal semantics, while retaining a strong connection to source documents (i.e., fragments of legal texts).…”

“…29 Open public data of the government of Catalonia: http:// dadesobertes.gencat.cat. 30 Open platform for French public data: http://www.data.gouv.fr. 31 Italian public administration open data: http://www.dati.gov.it.…”

Representing Judicial Argumentation in the Semantic Web

“…Moreover, the JudO Ontology library creates an environment where the knowledge extracted from the decision's text can be used to perform deeper reasoning and argumentation on the interpretation instances grounding the decision itself, using statements (either manually inserted or automatically imported from the ontology) in combination with a defeasible rulebase (see next section). For a complete presentation of the ontology see [24].…”