[NOTE: Updated 5-31-2009 to add citation to related conference paper, and on 6-1-2009 to revise introductory note.]
This blog will occasionally highlight legal informatics scholarship appearing outside the principal periodicals in the field. To find other recent legal informatics scholarship, see the Preprints, Articles, Indexes, Dissertations, Conferences, and Monographs sections of our sister Website, Legal Information Systems & Legal Informatics Resources.
Julia A. Ekstrom of Stanford University, et al., have published a short communication, A Tool to Navigate Overlaps in Fragmented Ocean Governance, 33 Marine Policy 532 (2009), full text (subscription required), abstract (free), and table of contents (free), all available here. Here is the abstract:
“Implementation of marine ecosystem-based management requires improved understanding of existing governance, including gaps and overlaps resulting from fragmented management. Focusing on overlaps, this paper presents a technique using text analysis to assist in the identification of agencies and laws involved in overlaps from a system perspective. The overlaps analysis uses term frequency counts on ocean laws and regulations in conjunction with relevant agency authority. Such information delivered in a transparent user-friendly presentation can help policymakers and other constituents of ecosystem-based management to find existing overlaps as a step to facilitate improved coordination.”
Dr. Ekstrom & Dr. Gloria T. Lau of Stanford University recently presented a related paper: Exploratory Text Mining of Ocean Law to Measure Overlapping Agency and Jurisdictional Authority, 2008 Proc. Int’l Conf. on Digital Gov’t Res. 53 [a.k.a. dg.o 2008], full text (subscription required), abstract, & references all available here. Thanks to Dr. Tom Bruce for notifying me of this paper.
Tags: Administrative law, Environmental regulation, Jurisdiction, Marine resources conservation Law and legislation, Ocean law, Text analysis
