Legal informatics papers @ CeDEM 2013

At least two papers on legal informatics were presented this week at CeDEM 2013: International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government, held 21-25 May 2013, Danube University Krems, Austria:

Kheira Belkacem and Vasilis Koulolias: Botswana Speaks Parliamentary Initiative: A sociopolitical approach to eDemocracy initiatives in developing countries

Aspasia Papaloi and Dimitris G. Gouscos: Parliamentary Information Visualization: Paving the way towards legislative transparency and empowered citizens. Abstract:

Governments may be becoming more extroverted by interacting with citizens, yet citizens remain frustrated as many do not know about legislative procedures. Aspasia Papaloi suggets the use of visualisation to help citizens access information, gain the necessary skills, commmunicate and collaborate. Visualisation is about information quality and clarity, and must follow accessibility (equal access, right to information) and usability standards (quality, efficiency, effectiveness).
Parliamentary information viusalisation (PIV) focuses on openness, transparency, and empowerment. Aspasia Papaloi wonders whether opening parliamentray data will be able to achieve legislative transparency? Any answer though requires the consideration of factors such as the involvement of stakeholders, the feasability and an evaluation of the scope and success of such an aim. It also requires the consideration of user needs and how they visualise information.

For abstracts and full text of papers, please contact the authors.

Click here for the BotswanaSpeaks Website.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference was #cedem13

Click here for the complete conference program.

If you know of other legal informatics papers or posters presented at the conference, please feel free to mention them in the comments.

HT @FrieseWoudloper and Digital Society Lab

Scherer et al.: Bridging narrative scenario texts and formal policy modeling through conceptual policy modeling

Sabrina Scherer, Professor Dr. Maria A. Wimmer, and Suvad Markisic, all of the University of Koblenz-Landau Institute for IS Research, have published Bridging narrative scenario texts and formal policy modeling through conceptual policy modeling, forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Here is the abstract:

Engaging stakeholders in policy making and supporting policy development with advanced information and communication technologies including policy simulation is currently high on the agenda of research. In order to involve stakeholders in providing their input to policy modeling via online means, simple techniques need to be employed such as scenario technique. Scenarios enable stakeholders to express their views in narrative text. At the other end of policy development, a frequently used approach to policy modeling is agent-based simulation. So far, effective support to transform narrative text input to formal simulation statements is not widely available. In this paper, we present a novel approach to support the transformation of narrative texts via conceptual modeling into formal simulation models. The approach also stores provenance information which is conveyed via annotations of texts to the conceptual model and further on to the simulation model. This way, traceability of information is provided, which contributes to better understanding and transparency, and therewith enables stakeholders and policy modelers to return to the sources that informed the conceptual and simulation model. In this paper, we present the consistent conceptual description (CCD) as conceptual modeling approach to bridge the gap between narrative texts and formal policy models. The CCD meta-model with the underlying vocabulary for describing policy contexts is detailed. A case study introduces the application of the approach in the Open Collaboration for Policy Modeling project.

Leitold and Tauber on A Systematic Approach to Legal Identity Management – Best Practice Austria

Dr. Arne Tauber of E-Government Innovationszentrum gave a presentation entitled Online-Vollmachten: Konzepte, Technik und Ausblick, at e-Government Konferenz 2012, held 19-20 June 2012 in Graz, Austria.

According to Dr. Tauber, this presentation is based on the following paper:

Mr. Herbert Leitold of Graz University of Technology Institut für Angewandte Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikationstechnologie and Dr. Tauber have published A Systematic Approach to Legal Identity Management – Best Practice Austria, in N. Pohlmann, H. Reimer, and W. Schneider (Eds.), ISSE 2011: Securing Electronic Business Processes: Highlights of the Information Security Solutions Europe 2011 Conference (pp. 1-11). Wiesbaden: Vieweg and Teubner.

Here is the abstract:

Electronic identity (eID) initiatives have in many cases started with state-issued credentials for secure authentication of natural persons. While citizen eID is a major leap, e-business and e-government processes are in many cases carried out by legal persons or professional representatives. Comprehensive mandate systems that seamlessly integrate with the national identity management (IDM) system are still rare. Austria is one example where electronic representation has been part of the citizen card concept from the beginning. In this paper we present the Austrian system as a case study. The system has been established about a decade ago. Experience made with the system led to adaptation and improvements. We describe the original approach of storing a mandate record asserting representation on the citizen card. This initial approach was comparable to attaching an excerpt of the constitutive register to an application in the paper world. Issuance of the electronic mandate had to be applied for by the representative upfront. With the emergence of improved services and technological progress and incorporating experience with the original system, the approach has recently been amended to so-called “online mandates” where the assertion of a representation is created just in time (JIT) when it is needed by the application. This gives fresh assertions, improves usability and better fits an increasing demand for mobility. The paper describes the Austrian system for electronic representation and how it emerged over time. Examples where the system is used are given.

Thanks to Dr. Tauber for telling me of the paper and allowing me to post the abstract.

Lima on the Problem of Accuracy in Legal Text Databases

Dr. João Alberto de Oliveira Lima of the Federal Senate of Brazil has published Apuração do texto original da Lei Geral de Orçamento (Lei no. 4.320/1964) a partir das Bases de Legislação Federal: Estudo de Caso, Revista de Informação Legislativa, 48(192), 79-93 (Oct.-Dec. 2011).

Here is an English-language abstract:

This paper, published in the last issue of Revista de Informação Legislativa (Senado Federal Publication – Brazil) deals with the problem of legal text databases accuracy.

Here is a summary of the article:

[I]nicialmente, apresentaremos o processo histórico de formação das principais bases de legislação federal e identificaremos a principal causa dos problemas de precisão; na sequência, como forma de detalhar as nuanças do problema, mostraremos os resultados do estudo de caso da apuração do texto original da Lei de Orçamentos, bem como a metodologia utilizada; por fim, serão apresentadas as considerações finais e sugeridas recomendações para minimizar a incidência de erros em bases de dados de legislação.

HT @joaoli13.

Livingstone: Regulatory Power? How Evidence Can Help Balance Contrary Pressures on Public Policy in the Case of Junk Food Advertising to Children

Professor Dr. Sonia Livingstone of The London School of Economics Department of Media and Communications, presented a paper entitled Regulatory Power? How Evidence Can Help Balance Contrary Pressures on Public Policy in the Case of Junk Food Advertising to Children, at ICA 2010: The International Communication Association Annual Conference, held 22-26 June 2010 in Singapore. Here is the abstract:

Closely watched from around the world, the UK regulator recently restricted the advertising of junk food to children. Using this case study, I will critically examine the public policy framework that seeks to balance bottom up (e.g. parental) and top down (e.g. regulatory) activities. Governments claim that self- or co-regulation can, if informed by empirical evidence, enable proportionate policy outcomes. Yet in this case, the outcome pleased no-one, leaving the researchers arguing over the meaning of the evidence while the health and marketing lobbies fought with each other behind the scenes. Meanwhile, children appear worse off since the restrictions on advertising precipitated a collapse in funding for original television production. While the longer-term benefits for children’s health, if any, remain to be seen, researchers are now regrouping to ask, how could their role have been better managed to better effect?

For the full text of the paper, please contact the author. The paper will be a chapter in Professor Livingstone’s forthcoming book: Lunt, P., and Livingstone, S. (in preparation) Media Regulation: Policy, Publics, Audiences. London: Sage.

Thanks to Professor Livingstone for providing the abstract and the citation for the book.

New on VoxPopuLII: Malmgren on Crowdsourcing Legal Commentary

Staffan Malmgren, creator of the Swedish free access to law service lagen.nu, has posted Crowdsourcing Legal Commentary, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.

Mr. Malmgren’s post describes how crowdsourcing, involving the MediaWiki platform, was used to add legal commentary to statutes in lagen.nu.

Mr. Malmgren discusses all aspects of this innovative crowdsourcing project, including computer programming, planning, administration, author incentives, quality control, and sustainability.

This post should be of interest to the free access to law community and indeed to all who publish digital legal information, as well as to the legal social media community.

Economists’ Brief in Leegin

Because this blog covers legal communication as well as legal information systems, this blog will occasionally post notable examples of legal communication.

The Economists’ Brief (in PDF, RTF, or MS Word) submitted in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., No. 06-480 (U.S. June 28, 2007) (click here for slip opinion from U.S. Supreme Court Website) is now available in PDF, RTF, or MS Word. The version posted is entitled Motion for Leave to File Brief and Brief of Amici Curiae Economists in Support of Petitioner, Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., No. 06-480 (U.S. Nov. 3, 2006).

The brief summarizes the economic literature showing that minimum resale price maintenance (RPM) can have procompetitive, efficiency-enhancing, and consumer-welfare enhancing effects. This brief is arguably one of the most noteworthy and influential amicus briefs submitted to The Court in recent years.

[NOTE: Updated 22 August 2011 to reflect new URLs.]

GM Bankruptcy: Case Study of Legal Information Systems

[NOTE: This post will be revised from time to time beginning June 1, 2009 and for the next few days.  On August 29, 2009, links were added to information about Old GM's new name, "Motors Liquidation Company", and about New GM's new name, "General Motors Company". On July 21-22, 2009, links were added to the House Judiciary Committee Commercial & Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing on Ramifications of Auto Industry Bankruptcies, video here, text of prepared testimony here and here. On July 6, 2009, links were added to Judge Gerber's decision and order approving the 363 sale in the cases, and to the Amended and Restated Master Sale and Purchase Agreement respecting the 363 sale which is linked here, as Appendix A of the order. On June 25, 2009, a link to the order granting DIP Financing Motion was added. On June 15, 2009, links respecting fee applications in the cases were added. On June 12, 2009, links to the House Commerce Committee hearing (audio and text of prepared testimony) on auto dealerships were added. On June 10, 2009, a link to the Senate Banking Committee hearing was added. On June 6, 2009, a link to GM-UAW documents was added. On June 2, 3, & 4, 2009 information about the plan of reorganization, creditors, equity holders, financials, the June 3 U.S. Senate hearing, & digital audio of Bankruptcy Court proceedings on PACER, was added.]

Because bankruptcy cases feature many interesting and little-studied information systems, this blog will discuss some of the major information systems utilized in the bankruptcy cases of the General Motors Corporation, now known as “Motors Liquidation Company”. Emphasis will be on publicly available systems. We’ll begin by identifying the basic entities, individuals, & information resources respecting the cases, and then identify the legal information systems pertaining to the cases. Here are the basic entities, individuals, & information resources respecting the cases:

• Debtor in Principal Case: General Motors Corporation, now known as “Motors Liquidation Company”. (This entity is informally known as “Old GM.” As of July 9, 2009, Old GM changed its name to “Motors Liquidation Company”. Here is a court filing declaring the name change (at p. 2), and here is a Website with information about the name change. As of July 10, 2009, per this notice, the case caption on court filings in the bankruptcy cases was changed to designate the debtor in the principal case as “Motors Liquidation Company”. In this blogpost, the terms “Motors Liquidation Company,” “General Motors Corporation,” “GM,” and “Old GM” all refer to the debtor in the principal case. As of July 10, 2009, the closing of the 363 sale, a new entity, officially named “General Motors Company” (formerly known as “NGMCO, Inc.” and “Vehicle Acquisition Holdings LLC” and informally referred to as “New GM”) acquired most of the assets of Old GM. New GM is not a debtor in these bankruptcy cases.
• Debtors & Case Numbers:
  • In re: General Motors Corporation, Case No. 09-50026-reg
  • In re: Chevrolet-Saturn of Harlem, Inc., Case No. 09-13558
  • In re: Saturn, LLC, Case No. 09-50027
  • In re: Saturn Distribution Corporation, Case No. 09-50028
• Filing Date: June 1, 2009
• Venue: United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.),
  http://www.nysb.uscourts.gov/
  
• Judge: Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Gerber
• Petitions:
  • In re: General Motors Corporation,
    http://coop.nysb.uscourts.gov/pdf/09-50026_petition.pdf
    
  • In re: Chevrolet-Saturn of Harlem, Inc.,
    http://coop.nysb.uscourts.gov/pdf/09-13558_petition.pdf
    
  • In re: Saturn, LLC,
    http://coop.nysb.uscourts.gov/pdf/09-50027_petition.pdf
    
  • In re: Saturn Distribution Corporation,
    http://coop.nysb.uscourts.gov/pdf/09-50028_petition.pdf
    
• Docket & Documents:
  • Free of Charge:
    http://www.gmcourtdocs.com
    , provided by the claims agent in the cases, The Garden City Group, Inc.
  • PACER (registration & fees required):
    https://ecf.nysb-mega.uscourts.gov/
    
    • Digital audio of proceedings in the cases is available on PACER (registration required) at the cost of $0.08 per audio file. HT Law Librarian Blog.
  • 363 Sale: On July 5, 2009, the Bankruptcy Court issued a decision and an order approving the sale, pursuant to section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, of “the bulk of” the debtors’ assets to an entity called NGMCO, Inc., which is the successor in interest to an entity called Vehicle Acquisitions Holdings LLC. The Amended and Restated Master Sale and Purchase Agreement respecting the 363 sale is linked here, as Appendix A of the order.
  • Plan of Reorganization: The Debtors’ have not yet submitted their proposed Plan of Reorganization to the court. However, the Debtors’ preliminary ideas respecting the capital structure of the reorganized Debtors appear in this June 1, 2009 GM press release (scroll down to the “Capital Structure of the New GM” section).
• Debtors’ Counsel: Harvey R. Miller & Stephen Karotkin of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
• Fee Applications by Professionals:
  • Fee applications filed by professionals employed in the cases are available on the claims agent’s docket page (search for: 327 ); initial applications by the debtors’ professionals were filed June 12, 2009.
  • Brian Baxter’s June 15, 2009 article in The American Lawyer summarizes the June 12, 2009 applications.
• Claims Agent: The Garden City Group, Inc.
• United States Trustee: Diana G. Adams
• Creditors:
  • Claims: eventually, but not yet, a database of claims filed in the cases will be available here.
  • Secured Creditors:
    • For now, the secured creditors can be identified from, among other documents, the DIP Financing Motion that the Debtors filed on the first day of the proceedings. Here is a Bloomberg news article summarizing the secured creditors’ information stated in the First Day Motions (scroll down to the “Government Loans” section).
    • Eventually, the secured creditors will be listed on Schedule D of the Debtors’ Schedules & Statements, when those schedules are filed with the Bankruptcy Court. Here is a blank Schedule D from the official Bankruptcy Forms Manual. (On June 1, 2009, Judge Gerber entered an order granting the Debtors a 45 day extension for filing their Schedules & Statements).
    • Prepetition Credit Facilities:
      • Revolving Secured Credit Facility Agreement, base agreement dated as of July 20, 2006; first amendment and consent dated as of February 11, 2009;
      • Term Loan Agreement, base agreement dated as of November 29, 2006 (see DIP Financing Motion at 17 n.5, 21-22; this agreement has not yet been located); first amendment dated as of March 4, 2009;
      • U.S. Treasury Loan & Security Agreement, base agreement dated as of December 31, 2008; amendment dated as of March 31, 2009; amendment number two dated as of April 22, 2009;
      • U.S. Treasury Loan & Security Agreement, base agreement dated as of January 16, 2009; equity pledge agreement dated as of January 16, 2009; consent number 1 dated as of January 29, 2009 (not located yet, but referred to in the amendment dated as of March 31, 2009); amendment dated as of March 31, 2009;
      • GE Fleet Services (GELCO) Loan & Security Agreement: base agreement dated as of October 2, 2006; first amendment dated as of September 27, 2007; second amendment dated as of November 29, 2007; third amendment dated as of February 17, 2009 (none of which has been located), see DIP Financing Motion at 17 n.6, 22-23;
      • Supplier Receivables Facility, dated as of April 3, 2009, see DIP Financing Motion at 26;
    • Postpetition Credit Facilities:
      • DIP Loan Agreement (scroll down; it’s an attachment to the DIP Financing Motion);
      • Order granting DIP Financing Motion.
  • Unsecured Creditors:
    • A list of the Debtors’ major unsecured creditors appears starting on page 6 of the GM petition.
    • When the Debtors file their Schedules & Statements, the list of unsecured creditors will appear on Schedules E & F. Details about the Schedules & Statements appear in sections B6 and B7 of the official Bankruptcy Forms Manual (scroll down).
    • Unsecured Creditors’ Committee: Here is a list of committee members. AmLaw Daily reports that Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP has been appointed committee counsel.
    • Bondholders:
      • Many bondholders are represented by the successor indenture trustee, Wilmington Trust Company, which is represented in the cases by David M. Feldman and Matthew J. Williams of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
      • Some of the bondholders have formed the Informal Group of Holders of General Motors Unsecured Notes, represented by Andrew N. Rosenberg of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
    • UAW:
      • The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (the United Auto Workers, or UAW) is represented in the bankruptcy cases by James L. Bromley of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.
      • Here are GM-UAW documents pertaining to the cases, including the UAW Retiree Settlement Agreement and the Master Sale and Purchase Agreement.
      • In addition, the UAW is a party to two class action cases related to the bankruptcy cases, namely Int’l Union, UAW, et al. v. General Motors Corp., Civil Action No. 07-14074 (E.D. Mich.) and UAW et al. v. General Motors Corp., No. 05-CV-73991 (E.D. Mich.), respecting which the lawyers for the class representatives are Hanan B. Kolko, Edward J. LoBello, et al. of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein P.C.
    • United Steelworkers (USW): represented by David R. Jury, Associate General Counsel, USW.
    • U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC): represented by Michael A. Maricco et al. of the PBGC’s Office of the Chief Counsel.
    • Other Unofficial Committees: several other groups of unsecured creditors, including tort plaintiffs, retirees, and car dealers, have formed unofficial committees which have made appearances in the cases. For details, see the docket.
• Equity Holders: GM’s bankruptcy petition (Exhibit A at 2, which is page 19 of the entire petition document) lists State Street Bank & Trust Company as GM’s largest holder of voting equity, and the only holder of 5% or more of GM’s voting equity. State Street is represented in the cases by Scott K. Rutsky and Adam T. Berkowitz of Proskauer Rose LLP. To date no official or unofficial committee of equity holders appears to have been formed.
• Financial Information:
  • Some stakeholders in the cases receive financial information about the Debtors from financial consultants. Others can obtain a good deal of financial information about the Debtors from publicly available sources:
    • GM’s balance sheet and value of outstanding bonds appear in Exhibit A, page 18 of its petition.
    • Details about GM’s secured debt appear in this post under Secured Creditors, and in its DIP Financing Motion, and details about its bank accounts and cash management system appear in its Cash Management Motion.
    • More details on the Debtors’ finances appear in GM’s SEC filings, especially its latest 10-Q report and 10-K report.
    • GM provides much financial information, including share price (once its shares resume trading; trading in GM shares on the NYSE has been suspended), on its investors page.
    • Bond prices and yields are reported in various financial sources, including the Wall Street Journal’s Corporate Bonds page (look under “High-Yield”). Other information on trading in GM’s debt can be found on the Wall Street Journal’s bonds page, scroll down to “Complete Bonds, Rates & Credit Markets Data”.
    • For pricing of GM’s loans (so-called “leveraged loans”), see the Wall Street Journal’s Syndicated Loan table.
    • When the Debtors finally file their Statement of Financial Affairs (SOFA), the Summary of Schedules and the SOFA will be valuable resources aggregating key financial information about the debtors. Details about the Schedules & Statements appear in sections B6 and B7 of the official Bankruptcy Forms Manual (scroll down).
• Press Releases & Contact Information:
  • Debtor’s Press Releases: U.S.:
    http://media.gm.com/
    and
    http://www.gm.com/corporate/investor_information/cal_events/
    ; Europe:
    http://media.gm.com/eur/gm/en/
    
  • Initial Press Conference:: General Motors President and CEO, Fritz Henderson, hosted a press conference on Monday, June 1, 2009, at 12:15 p.m. ET. A transcript appears here. According to GM, a webcast of the press conference is available here through June 30, 2009.
  • Debtor’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Pages:
    http://www.gm.com/restructuring/
    
  • Contacts for Information Directed to Creditors (including Suppliers), Shareholders, or Customers, or Directed to Those Seeking Claims Information: http://www.gmcourtdocs.com/info.php3 (scroll down)
• U.S. Government Statements, Documents, & Events:
  • U.S. House Judiciary Committee Commercial & Administrative Law Subcommittee, July 21-22, 2009 hearing on Ramifications of Auto Industry Bankruptcies, video here, text of prepared testimony here and here.
  • U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee, Oversight & Investigations Subcomittee Hearing, June 12, 2009, audio here, and text of prepared testimony here .
  • U.S. Senate Banking Committee Hearing, June 10, 2009
  • U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Hearing, June 3, 2009
  • President Obama’s June 1, 2009 Statement (via MSNBC)
  • Fact Sheet: Obama Administration Auto Restructuring Initiative, General Motors Restructuring