December 9, 2005Jurix conference Brussels 1 Using legal definitions to increase the accessibility of legal documents Laurens Mommers, Wim Voermans Department of State and Administrative Law Faculty of Law, Leiden University

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels2 Access to legal information? legal information

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels3 A black box?  Different source types  Large numbers of documents  Complex version management for some document types  Specialized terminology  Complex hierarchical relations between documents  Complex language use

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels4 Lawyers vs. Laymen......and the need for a Universal Business Adapter...

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels5 Lawyers vs. Laymen......a Babel Fish...

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels6 Lawyers vs. Laymen......or magic reading glasses

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels7 In the absence of which... Realistic solutions should be found:  Semantic means  Smallest meaningful entities  Meaningful relations

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels8 Creating a legal WordNet  Define concepts lexical vs legal concepts occurrence in documents  Impose relations lexical vs legal relations relations between documents

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels9 Legal definition techniques  No definition every-day meaning specialized language meaning no ambiguities  By context  Definitions

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels10 Definition types  General definitions (whole new meaning): generalisations: characteristics of a concept specifications: instances of a concept abbreviations: meaning of abbreviated concepts recursive definitions: reference to other concepts  Partial definitions (partial new meaning): extension or limitation of the meaning of a known concept in or outside the definition article  Definition by reference

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels11 Where do meanings come from?  Use the most obvious source of explicit legal meaning: authoritative legal documents legislation, case law, customary law non-authoritative legal documents literature legal interpretation methods (grammatical, historical, teleological etc.)

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels12 Linking legal and regular meaning  Comparison is possible if definitions are made explicit comparative terminology (Sara Castagnoli) perfect equivalence partial equivalence non-equivalence

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels13 Relation types  Content relations conceptual equivalence (partial or full) functional equivalence (partial or full)  Structural relations implemented in implemented as  Legal relation legal equivalence (partial or full)

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels14 Legal concept (1)  Synset: {service provider}  Gloss: any natural or legal person providing an information society service  Source: Directive 2000/31/EC  Definition type: generalisation

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels15 Legal concept (2)  Synset: {established service provider}  Gloss: a service provider who effectively pursues an economic activity using a fixed establishment for an indefinite period. [etc.]  Source: Directive 2000/31/EC  Definition type: partial definition, includes {service provider}

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels16 Relations  Hyponymy/hyperonymy {established service provider} hyponym_of {service provider}  Implementation {elektronische handtekening (1)} implemented_as {elektronische handtekening (2)}  Equivalence {elektronische handtekening (1)} equivalent_to {elektronische handtekening (2)}

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels17 Overview < EC legal documents national legal documents > ^ relations: implementation (blue), equivalence (yellow)

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels18 Supporting mono-lingual accessibility  linking different vocabularies by similarity finding links between lexical and legal vocabularies  purpose: mapping laymen’s questions to legal documents linking legal documents to legally relevant documents information retrieval

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels19 Supporting cross-lingual accessibility  linking different vocabularies by similarity finding equivalents and near equivalents between legal vocabularies finding differences between concepts  purpose: comparative law research comparing implementations of EU legislation information retrieval

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels20 Using meaning to support users  Showing meanings (hyperlinks etc.)  Showing differences in meanings (marking identical parts)  Showing meanings to disambiguate queries (input of ambiguous term, manual disambiguation by user)

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels21 Real-world applications  Using legal and lexical definitions to explain terms in legal documents  Building networks of documents from different legal systems, enabling easier comparison  Comparative law research (practical and theoretical)

December 9, 2005 Jurix conference Brussels22 Please note... legal information...that this is a transparent box now