Transcript On legal ontology and epistemology

On ontology and epistemology in law
Joost Breuker
Dept. of Computational Legal Theory (LRI)
University of Amsterdam
[email protected]
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Overview

Views & ontologies of law





legal theory
law as a social system
the world of legal documents
Epistemological promiscuity in proposed legal
ontologies
Towards integration of legal ontologies



e-Court & E-POWER
LeXML
--> the legal world is ontologically distributed over the common
sense world
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Views on the legal world (1)
Legal theory / legal philosophy



justifying the law (ethics; power & authority; `discovering’
law, the bootstrapping of legality, etc)
some universal legal concepts (Hohfeld, Kelsen,…)
legal theory is concerned with epistemological issues
rather than ontological ones



the legal decisions and the laws are meta-qualifications about
some case/world.
these qualifications do not influence the world as such…but they
may have drastic real world consequences (law enforcement)
legal theory is a reflection on practical legal problem solving
(decision making, argument, legal case assessment, legal drafting)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Language of Legal Relations (LLR)
Hohfeld, 1913 ---> Layman Allen (74-97)

schemas of basic legal concepts as `legal positions’ e.g.
normative :
right
duty
no-right
privilege
competence:

power
liability
disability
immunity
legal norms as cascading typed propositions



bootstrapping from basic: duty -typed
all (43) relations are `derived’ by varying duty and introducing
power and conditionals
justifying the law as evolving complexity on norms
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
epistemological and ontological
views in problem solving (Breuker, 95)

functions in problem solving methods:
1. generating solutions (`explanations’)
2. testing solutions (arguing why solutions are (in)valid/correct)
3. arriving at a conclusion
 components of solutions:
complete
solution
case model
conclusion
argument
structure
`justification’
`explanation’
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Views on the legal world (2)
Law as a social control system

controlling (socially) undesirable behaviour




norms: qualifying generic situations as (un)desirable
persons & organizations as legal subjects
autonomously acting social world --> legal cases: (stories)
legal decision making (courts)
• assessing/compensating norm violations
• resolving conflict

procedural justification:
• reference to documentation (legal sources; `court-filing’ (case); …)
• dispute, collecting evidence
• procedural law

law enforcement:
• monopoly of physical coercion (power) (police, prison, etc.)

legal system itself

social organization and roles (judges, prosecutors, police, etc.)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
FOLaw (functional ontology)
normative reasoning (Valente, Breuker & Brouwer, 99)
CASE
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
FOLaw (functional ontology)
causal reasoning (Valente, Breuker & Brouwer, 99)
Who did what?
Who is to be blamed?
What has happened?
CASE
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
proven to be very useful


inference structure for legal reasoning
applied and works very well for:



legal knowledge systems (legal case assessment): ON-LINE
`legal assessment shell’.
analyzing regulations (eg for educational systems)
legal information retrieval
• CLIME project: 15.000 rules (norms) about ship `classification’
include international sea law (Winkels et al, 2002)

developing representation & inference on
• norms (deontic operators): see Valente et al, 99 (no deontic logic!)
• …responsibility….(Lehmann, forthcoming)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
but…


mainly epistemology…(except for the world knowledge!)
other examples of legal core `epistemologies’:

Visser & van Kralingen (1995):
• frames for norms, actions, concepts, etc.
• metadata for DB fields

Mommers (`applied legal epistemology’ 2002):
• disentangling epistemology from ontology?
NB: for SW etc epistemological frameworks may be as
useful as ontologies! they shouldn’t be mixed
nb 2: tasks, problem solving methods, arguments etc are NOT
parts of ontologies but epistemic frames!
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Mixing O & E in a core for law
(Mommers, 2002)
ontological
status layers
epistemic
roles
knowledge based
model of the
legal domain
ontology
of law 1
ontology
of law 2
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
ontology
of law 3
Mixing O & E in a core for law
(Mommers, 2002)
ontological
status layers
epistemic
roles
knowledge based
model of the
legal domain
ontology
of law 1
ontology
of law 2
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
ontology
of law 3
Mixing O & E in a core for law
(Mommers, 2002)
ontological
status layers
epistemic
roles
knowledge based
model of the
legal domain
ontology
of law 1
ontology
of law 2
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
ontology
of law 3
legal concepts as subtypes of
`regular’ concepts…(1)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
legal concepts as subtypes of
`regular’ concepts…(2)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
intermediary summary

the main business of law is justification of
decisions/power

epistemological frameworks rather than ontologies
• perfect for reasoning architectures (FOLaw), but
• not one has been expressed in a KR/DL formalism!

from exclusively normative to some subtyping of
`regular’ (top) ontologies (see also Gangemi et al. 2001)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Views on the legal world (3)
Legal information serving


access to legal documents/information is a major
requirement in e-government & e-business on the SW
document standards for the WWW/SW: XML-Schemas
& tagging/annotation



LegalXML: USA (part of OASIS)
LeXML: Europe (…informal…)
LeXML views on documents:

form/structure:
• formal requirements (eg. standard phrases in Dutch legislation)
• sectioning


role/function/legal-status
content/topics….
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
lexml.nl: legal ontologies as part
of the `dictionary’ (Boer et al, 2002)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
use of ontologies in (legal)
information serving

Tagging/annotation


manual: ontology as consistent standard vocabulary
semi-automatic:
• instantiation/identification (“the judge” --> <judge-1>)
• interpretation: ?? NLP --> instantiating RDF-triples etc ==>
abstracts (SW)

Information retrieval


expanding query (CLIME; Winkels et al, 2002)
clustering return set of documents by using additional
information (eg multiple classification, ranges )
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
what kind of ontologies?
(example: e-Court)

e-COURT
IST-2000-28199
documents: criminal trial hearings (transcriptions)


document-(meta-) data (identifiers etc.)--> LeXML
sectioning (-> tagging):
• formal trial phases ---> formal criminal law
• nature of text/discourse: ---> dialogue

type of dialogue (interrogation; dispute)



…argument-types/structure?
turn-taking (agents/roles)
topics (content)
• common sense events/things….---> Wordnet?
• criminal law (substantial, formal)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Ontology of Dutch criminal law: agents
Agent:
Person
Natural person
Juristic person
Company
A ssociation
Foundation
Organisation
Public
Ministry of Justice
Public A uthority
Public s ervice
Public-organisation-f unction
Administration
Procureur-General
Public P rosecutor Office
In vestigation
Police
Adjudication
Court
Court-type (juris diction)
Criminal court
Court-level
Cantonal Court
Court of appeal
Supreme Court
Joost Breuker
Private
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Ontology of Dutch criminal law: roles
Role:
Legal role
V ictim
Public s ervant
Juridical
Judic ial
Judge
Presiding judge
Prosecution
Public P rosecutor
In vestigating
In vestigating of ficer
In vestigating judge
Administrative
Minister of Justice
Law clerk (grif fier)
Court bailif f
Registrar
Legal representative
Guardian (representing the victim)
Prosecution (representing the state)
Def ence counsel (representing the def endant)
Def endant
Principal
A ccessory
Of fender
Convict
Witness
Anonymous w itness
Joost Breuker
Ex pert
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Ontology of Dutch criminal law: criminal actions
Action:
Criminal of f ence:
Felony
Of fence against the security of the state
Of fences against Royal Di gnity
Of fences against Heads of Friendly Nations and other
Int ernationally Protected Persons
Of fences against Public Order
Duelling
Of fences Endangering the General Safety of Persons or Property
Of fences Against Public A uthority
Perjury
Counterf eiting and Fals ifying
of Coinage, Government Notes and Bank N otes
of Stamps, Seals and Marks
ÉÉ ..
misdemea nour
Less er of fences related to saf ety of Persons and Property
Less er of fences related to Public Order
Less er Of fences Related to Public A uthority
É .
Punishment
Principal punishment
Imprisonment
For lif e
Determinate period
Detention
Community service
Fine
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
what kind of ontologies?
(example 2: E-POWER)*


ist 28125
goal: information management for drafting tax legislation
documents: tax legislation


document-(meta-) data (identifiers etc.)--> LeXML
sectioning (-> tagging):
• sectioning: chapter/article/`full-phrase’ .)--> LeXML
• nature of text/discourse: ---> individual statements, many
references

topics (content)
• tax law (substantial, formal)
*) European Programme for an Ontology based Work Environment
for Regulations and legislation
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
parts of ontology for tax law
agent
person
natural_person
juristic_person....
organization....
role...
public_servant
juridical
tax_inspector
financial_crime_police_officer...
judicial
judge...
physical_object...
document
form
tax_form...
regulation
tax_regulation
physical_quantity
amount
money (M)
income (M)...
action.....
declaring_income_tax
procedure....
appealing_legal
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
typical legal documents

regulations





statutes, codes, provisions, rules…
contracts
forms and requests (citizen -> administration)
exhibits and declarations (criminal law)
transcripts of hearings (court sessions)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
What’s in a regulation

Dutch traffic code (RVV-90)





art. 3 Vehicles should keep to the right
art. 6 Two bicycles may ride next to each other
art. 33 A trailer should have lights at the back
incoherent & inconsistent
regulations are not typical text:



they are `comments’ (legal qualifications)
on some generic situations that may exist
in some implicit (legal) world
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
ontology of the (legal) world of traffic
traffic-term
agent
pedestrian
action
driver
move
vehicle
position
indicate motorized
change
direction
part of
relative
road
lane
traffic consists of actions of drivers with vehicles that change positions
on the road
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
legal ontology: layers?

legal domain specific



law specific:



document: regulation
qualification: right --> forbidden --> violation
liability
common-sense:


a (legal) world (traffic, income, crime, …)
but overlap between domains eg roles, documents, etc
event, intention, object, etc.
we better start from a `regular’ upper ontology for



consistency
integration
knowledge acquisition support…
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
e-COURT Upper (ECU) vs SUMO….
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
major distinctions

mental world ( analogous to physical world)







ambiguous objects (eg agent): multiple classification (no `mind-body’
problem…)
representation-relation of mental objects to physical objects (eg
concept --> symbol)
mental_processes & mental_objects as ontological reification of
epistemic processes (eg reason, argument,…)
occurrence: events & states as INSTANCES_OF (mental,
physical) processes and actions
time/space: define positions of events/states
physical world: processes as changes of matter/energy (..both..
i.e. multiple view but distribution..)
not yet: life ( organic_matter!)
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
conclusions



law is a typical `epistemic business’; not an ontologically
founded one
legal domains have ramifications all over the common
sense world
an upper ontology is very welcome:

NOT TO IMPOSE STANDARDS!
• standards are to be expected & required for typical legal document
description (LeXML,..)

to support distributed, local development of legal domain
ontologies for:
• public access to law
• harmonization of (European) law
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia
Joost Breuker
OntoWeb-2002, Sardinia