Linked Data and Law

Since I last posted on the availability of Library of Congress Subject Headings for law becoming available as Linked Data marked up in SKOS, a number of additional legal information resources have become available as Linked Data (or, in the case of the LKIF-Core Ontology, have been available for some time, but I’ve only recently learned of the Linked Data version). Here is a description of those that I can identify from the LinkedData.org Data Sets page (those identified from other sources are noted):

• The Legal Information Institute has described its Linked Legal Data project respecting the Code of Federal Regulations, in Casellas et al., Linked Legal Data: Improving Access to Regulatory Information (2012);
• The CALI Taxonomy is in the process of being marked up in RDF and made available as Linked Data, in a joint project of CALI: The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, and the Rutgers University Camden Law Library Digital Collections. Thanks to Tom Bruce, Director of the LII, and John Joergensen, creator of the Rutgers Camden Digital Collections for this information;
• DBPedia offers law-related articles from Wikipedia as Linked Data marked up in RDF & SKOS; here is the display for “tort law”;
• The first two levels of the “Law” classes of the Dewey Decimal Classification are now available as Linked Data (HT Lorcan Dempsey);
• EUROVOC, the European multilingual thesaurus, which contains a rich set of legal subject terms, is now available as Linked Data in SKOS from EUROVOC and from CTIC;
• GovTrack includes U.S. congressional legislation and The Congressional Record as Linked Data marked up in on RDF;
• The Italian Senate has made available a SPARQL endpoint for legislative Linked Data;
• The LC Name Authority File is now available as Linked Data (as of August 2011). Click here for access to bulk data for download. This file contains records for very large numbers of government entities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, India, and many other nations, as well as the names of thousands of law-related individuals. Click here for more details. HT @naypinya;
• The Library of Congress (LC) plans to make its Name Authority File available as RDF Linked Data later in 2010. That file contains the names of thousands of government agencies in the U.S., the U.K., and other jurisdictions, as well as the names of thousands of law-related individuals. Thanks to a source at LC for this information;
• The Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings are available in SKOS Linked Data [URL corrected 10 August 2011]. Click here for access to bulk data for download. LC Subject Headings contain very large and detailed taxonomies of subject terms for U.S. and U.K. law, as well as legal taxonomies for many other jurisdictions, and for public international law. Click here for a post about the implications of LC Subject Headings in SKOS Linked Data, for digital legal publishing. (Note that the Linked Data versions of the Rameau and LC Subject Headings now link to each other.)
• FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) as Linked Data, published by OCLC: This is “an enumerative, faceted subject heading schema derived from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)”; i.e., an un-coordinated version of LCSH. Like LCSH, FAST contains a very large collection of legal subject terms. Click here for a description of FAST Linked Data.
• The Library of Congress Classification K Class: Law is available as Linked Data from the LC Linked Data Service. Click here for Kevin Ford’s post describing the data.
• The Legal Information Institute Legislative Metadata Model supports Linked Data;
• The LKIF-Core Ontology, developed within the ESTRELLA project, has been available in RDF since at least 2007 (HT Dr. Rinke Hoekstra);
• The UK National Archives‘ Legislation.gov.uk incorporates Linked Data (click here for details; for earlier discussion of this system, see details from Dr. John L. Sheridan via Dr. Adam Wyner here and here);
• The MetaLex Document Server is a source for all Dutch national statutes and regulations, free on the Web, in CEN MetaLex XML and RDF Linked Data. It was developed by Dr. Rinke Hoekstra of Leibniz Center for Law. (Click here for a post about The MetaLex Document Server.)
• RAMEAU French-language subject headings for legal topics are now available in Linked Data marked up on SKOS, from the Department of Computer Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. (Note that the Linked Data versions of the Rameau and LC Subject Headings now link to each other.)

  For example, here is the display for “Faute (droit)”. Here are instructions for using the search interface:

  • In section 1., under “Concept Scheme Group”, select “Rameau”;
  • In section 2., in the “Label” box, enter a law-related term, such as: faute ;
  • In the results list of subject terms, click on one of the terms (e.g., click on Faute (droit));
  • At the bottom of the page, click on “Display concept details”;
  • On the page that appears, the related concepts will display; click on any of them to explore further.
• The UMBEL ontology includes several legal concepts available as Linked Data; search here (e.g., search for: law );
• VIAF, the Virtual International Authority File, enables bulk download of Linked Data versions (in RDF) of name authority records for organizations (corporate bodies) and individuals (personal names) from more than 30 national or research libraries. Records can also be searched through the VIAF Web user interface;
• Joshua Tauberer has made some U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents from the EDGAR database available as Linked Data marked up in RDF;
• Watchdog.net includes metadata for selected U.S. congressional legislation as Linked Data marked up in RDF; for example, here is metadata for H.R. 1357 from the 108th Congress (click on “XML” in the line that begins “Developers”);
• The Linked Data version of WordNet, from the RKB Explorer Initiative, contains a very large number of legal terms; see, e.g., this display for “Contract” (scroll down to see all the related terms);
• The eGovernment Interest Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C eGov IG) has published a report entitled Publishing Open Government Data that recommends that governments incorporate Linked Data into their publicly available information;
• The YAGO ontology contains a number of legal concepts, available as Linked Data; see, e.g., the display for “tort”. Here are suggestions for using the search interface:
  • Scroll down to the words “Query Form”;
  • In the row labeled “?id0:”, in the first box, enter a legal term, such as estoppel;
  • In the second box in that row, select the term “means”;
  • Click “Submit”;
  • When the results appear, click on any of the results to see the Linked Data display;
  • In the Linked Data display, click on any of the results to explore further.

If you know of additional legal knowledge representation systems available as Linked Data, please mention them in the comments.

[Updated 26 April 2013 to include VIAF, the Virtual International Authority File. HT @3windmills]

[Updated 26 April 2013 to include Bulk access to Library of Congress Linked Data Name Authority records and Subject Authority records. HT @3windmills]

[Updated 12 April 2013 to include The Library of Congress Classification K Class: Law, now available as Linked Data from the LC Linked Data Service.

[Updated 18 March 2013 to include the Italian Senate's SPARQL endpoint for legislative Linked Data.]

[Updated 16 March 2013 to include Legal Information Institute Legislative Metadata Model.]

[UPDATE 6 April 2012: The Legal Information Institute has described its legal Linked Data project respecting the Code of Federal Regulations in Casellas et al., Linked Legal Data: Improving Access to Regulatory Information (2012).]

[Updated 15 December 2011: OCLC has made available FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) as Linked Data.]

[UPDATE 10 August 2011: The Library of Congress has made available the LC Name Authority File as Linked Data.]

[NOTE: Updated on 29 July 2010 to link to the new Legislation.gov.uk. Updated on 18 February 2010 to correct the RAMEAU link. Updated on 17 February 2010 to link to the SKOS version of EUROVOC (HT @iricelino). Updated on 17 January 2010 to mention that the Linked Data versions of the Rameau and Library of Congress Subject Headings now link to each other. Updated on 2 January 2010 to add link to Library of Congress Subject Headings in SKOS Linked Data, and to revise the link to UK OPSI's Legislation site. Updated on 1 January 2010 to mention LC's plan to make its Name Authority File available as Linked Data later in 2010, and the effort to make the CALI Taxonomy available as Linked Data. Updated on 20 September 2009 to link to UK OPSI's Single Legislation Service and to the W3C eGovernment Interest Group's report entitled Publishing Open Government Data. Updated on 8-20-09 to include LKIF-Core Ontology.]

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