Building a Legal Taxonomy & Thesaurus: The Palestinian Experience

IRIS 08(The International Legal Informatics Symposium)

Salzburg - Austria

Building a Legal Taxonomy and Thesaurus

– The Palestinian Experience

Jamil Salem/Ahmad Hammo

Institute of Law – Birzeit Universityhttp://lawcenter.birzeit.edu

Agenda• Al-Muqtafi• Consolidation Database• Court Judgments Database• Defining Syntax for Legislation (L) and Judgment Text

(JT)• Defining Database Relations from XML• Structural Connection between JT & L• Level 0: IoL Legislation Dictionary• Level 1:JT Taxonomy• Level 2: Thesaurus• Level 3: Conceptual Linking • Future Steps

Al-MuqtafiThe Palestinian Legislation and Court

Judgments Database

• What is Al-Muqtafi?• URL: http://muqtafi.birzeit.edu• Content:

– Legislation since the Ottoman period– Court Judgments – International Documents about Palestine– Legal Dictionary (A/E)– Court Judgments Classification Scheme

(KASHAF)– Legal Thesaurus (A/E)

Consolidation Project(Duration: 30 months-ended Dec. 2007)

• Primary Goal- a Soft and a Hardcopy of consolidated Legislation

users are able to view any item of legislation in the final image, including a

Consolidation of all amendments introduced thereto on the level of the legislation as a whole as well as on the level of articles or any part of the legislation, such as annexes

• Linking Text of consolidated Legislation to relevant Legislation

users can access legislation relevant to the original item of legislationby means of reliance, amendment, abrogation, reference, etc. in addition, texts of consolidated legislation are linked to the Court Judgments Database, which allows users to view applications of legalprovisions to court judgements

Court Judgments Database(Duration: 30 months-till end of April 2008)

• Compilation of Palestinian High Court Judgments since 1994. (around 23,000)

• Creation of a database of Court Judgments in full text and scanned images, with advanced indexing and search techniques, (new website will be launched soon)

• Linking Court Judgments with the Legislation database, with references to relevant laws and articles and vice versa.

• Adding commentaries to selected Judgments (200 commentaries)

• Extracting legal principles from certain judgments (1000 extracted principles)

Syntax Definitions

• Fix Syntax• Using XML DTDs• Machine readability• Prerequisite for describing the

semantics of digital legislation and judgment text

Database Relations(1/2)

• Extracted from XML• PLink Concept for Legislation• Managed in the Database• Semantics extracted:

– Reliance– Reference– Amendment– Abrogation– Implementation (Application)– Enforcement extension– Secondary Legislation– Court Judgments

Database Relations(2/2)

• XML for JT• Extracting JT lifecycle & managing in

DB

Connection between JT & L

• <!ELEMENT relevant-text (#PCDATA)>

<!ATTLIST relevant-texttype (legislation | precedence | guidingcase | doctrine) "legislation"

href CDATA #REQUIRED >• The other direction is possible too.

Level 0: IoL Ls Dictionary (1/4)

• informal (A/E) definitions associated to concept names

Level 0: IoL Ls Dictionary (2/4)

Level 0: IoL Ls Dictionary (3/4)

Level 0: IoL Ls Dictionary (4/4)

Level 1:JT Taxonomy (1/3)

• Describing relationships between concepts Penal

Procedures Crimes

Material elementsImmaterial elements

Level 1: JT Taxonomy (2/3)

Level 1: JT Taxonomy (3/3)

Level 2: Thesaurus

•Adding to Taxonomies various Lexical Relationships

Level 3: Conceptual Linking

• Requirements:– Defining new Relationships– Semantically Integrating the IoL’s

Information Systems

• Technology:– Ontology– RDF– Topic Maps

Future Steps

– Training legal community (Judges, prosecutors, lawyers, civil servants)

– Further development and updating of both the Court Judgment Database and the Legislation Database

– Linking Al-Muqtafi with Case Management Systems of Palestinian Courts (Al-Mizan)!

– Linking Al-Muqtafi with the Bureau of Legislation and Opinion (Ministry of Justice)-co-drafting a Palestinian Official Gazette Law

– Development of Conceptual Links between the different databases and IoL Montesquieu Library

Thanks!We will be happy to answer

your questions!Jamil Salem

[email protected] Ahmad Hammo

[email protected] Birzeit University, Institute of LawP.O. Box 14 West Bank Palestine

http://lawcenter.birzeit.edu