Bruce on Legislative Identifier Granularity

Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School (LII) has posted Identifiers, Part 2: Identifier Granularity, on LII’s new legislative metadata blog, Making Metasausage.

In this post, Tom explores legislative identifier granularity, or the level of specificity at which such an identifier functions. The post discusses related issues such as the incorporation of semantics in identifiers; the use of “pure” (semantics-free) legislative identifiers; and how government agency authority and procedural rules influence the use, “persistence, and uniqueness” of identifiers. The latter discussion leads Tom to conclude that

a “gold standard” system of identifiers, specified and assigned by a relatively independent body, is needed at the core. That gold standard can then be extended via known, stable relationships with existing identifier systems, and designed for extensible use by others outside the immediate legislative community.

The post continues with a discussion of the relationship of legislative identifier granularity to various functions of identifiers, including “tracing the evolution of a bill or other legislative document,” “recording the status of that document,” version control, “fragmentation” of legislative documents, and “recombination” of such fragments, as through “codification,” which Tom calls an example of “fragmentary re-use.”

For more information, please see the complete post.

Interview with Núria Casellas: Legally Linked: Linked Open Data Principles Applied To Code Of Federal Regulations

An interview with Dr. Núria Casellas of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School (LII), entitled Legally Linked: Linked Open Data Principles Applied To Code Of Federal Regulations, has been published at semanticweb.com.

In this interview, Dr. Casellas discusses the application of Linked Data in Title 21 of LII’s new version of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations. In that title, users can search for “brand names for drugs (such as Tylenol), and receiv[e] the generic name for the drug (acetaminophen) as a suggested term.” LII plans to incorporate “definitions, obligations and vocabularies, and product information to enhance search and retrieval, and also visualization of the information.”

Dr. Casellas also describes a plan to “link[] materials from the Drug Bank open data drug and drug target database, which has been transformed into RDF and made available as a SPARQL endpoint, to Title 21 in the CFR, and vice vers[a].” The article notes that LII “is developing a SKOS-based thesaur[us] derived from the terms used in the CFR, and extracting definitions and obligations.” LII also plans to include in its CFR metadata “product codes from sources such as the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).”

For more information, please see the complete article.

Bruce on Cross-Database Integration and Linked Data in Online Legal Publishing

Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School (LII) has posted On stovepipes, barstools, and bagels, with a mangy dog thrown in, on his blog, b-screeds.

In this post, Tom discusses trends in online legal publishing, over the course of the 20 years of the LII’s existence. He notes a trend toward integrating databases of different sources of law — statutes, regulations, and, in common law jurisdictions, court decisions — through cross-database search and hyperlinking.

Tom sees Semantic Web and Linked Data technology as new means of achieving this integration. As an example of the latter, Tom discusses the Linked Data features of title 21 of the LII’s new Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) service.

Click here for more information about the LII’s new CFR database.

Click here for more information about Linked Data and law.

Bruce on the Functions of Legislative Identifiers

Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School (LII) has posted Identifiers, Part 1, on LII’s new legislative metadata blog, Making Metasausage.

In this post, Tom discusses the multiple functions that legislative document identifiers serve. These include “unique naming,” “navigational reference,” “retrieval hook / container label,” “thread tag / associative marker,” “process milestone,” and several more.

The post includes examples from the Law Library of Congress‘s legislative information system THOMAS, and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).

Tom says that the next post will address “identifier granularity and some other characteristics; stresses and strains on identifier design.”

For more information, please see the complete post.

New Version of Code of Federal Regulations Launched by Cornell LII

A new, free, online version of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the U.S. federal administrative code, has been launched by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, according to an announcement on the LII Announce blog.

According to the announcement, this new version of the CFR has several new features:

• “the same search and navigation features .. of [LII's version of] the United States Code“
• “cross-references both within the CFR and to relevant parts of the United States Code“
• “links to relevant statutory authority and to rulemaking dockets for pending regulations that may affect the section the user is viewing”
• “updated concurrently with updates to the GPO’s Federal Digital System data on which it is based, with links from each page to the Office of the Federal Register’s e-CFR edition for more recent updates”
• “new features based on the capabilities of the Semantic Web”:
• “users can now search Title 21 using brand names for drugs (such as Tylenol), and receive the generic name for the drug (acetaminophen) as a suggested term”
• In the near future, the LII CFR will include: “searches by United Nations product code, the identification and linking of relevant agency guidance information for each Part and Section, and a wide variety of Linked Data offerings”

For more information, please see the complete announcement.

For more information on Linked Data technology in connection with the LII CFR, please see:

• Casellas, Vallbé, and Bruce: From Legal Information to Open Legal Data: A Case Study in U.S. Federal Legal Information
• Casellas et al. on Linked Legal Data: Improving Access to Regulatory Information

HT @LIICornell.

LVI 2012: Law via the Internet Conference

LVI 2012: The Law via the Internet Conference — the international conference of the legal information institutes and the free-access-to-law community — will be held October 7-9, 2012 at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York.

The submission deadline for proposals is 15 March 2012.

Here is the preliminary conference announcement, from Tom Bruce, Director of the Legal Information Institute (LII):

The LVI community now reaches significantly beyond the academic halls in which open access to law had its inception. As such, LVI 2012 is meant to be a place for interaction and discussion among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers situated in universities, in private industry, in government, in non-profit settings outside universities, and wherever people who work with open access to law can be found. We are very excited about hosting this conference in the USA for the first time, and we hope you will join us in October for the conference and to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the LII.

The conference begins with a Welcome Reception at 5PM on Sunday, October 7, and closes with a Farewell Reception at 5PM on Tuesday, October 9. In between, participants will be treated to two keynote addresses by special guests and forty conference sessions on topics in:

• Social Impacts of Public Engagement
• Business and Technology of Legal Publishing
• Free Law and Government Policy
• Application Development for Open Access and Engagement
• Legal Informatics: Data Organization, Presentation, and Systems

But it’s not all work! In addition to the two receptions mentioned above, we’ll also include two special luncheons, tourism opportunities for spouses and partners not attending the conference sessions, and an exciting Birthday Gala with dinner and dancing to celebrate our 20th Anniversary.

The official conference website will go live in mid-January with information about travel, lodging, registration and how to propose a paper or presentation. In the meantime, we ask that you follow LVI2012 on Twitter ( @LVI2012 ), where we will post the latest information and news as it becomes available.

More information will come soon, but until then, please accept our best wishes for a joyful holiday season, and a happy and prosperous New Year.

All the best,

Tom, Sara, Brian, Val, Nuria, Paul, Pep, Dan, Dave, Wayne

[NOTE: Updated 2-9-12 to link to the conference Website.]

July 25: UniversalCitation.org Organizational Meeting

An organizational meeting for UniversalCitation.org will be held 25 July 2011, at the Rutgers Camden Law School.

UniversalCitation.org is a new, U.S.-based effort to urge governments to adopt non-proprietary legal citation standards, and to create new technologies that process and output non-proprietary legal citation information.

According to the project’s Website, the organizers of this effort are Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School; John Joergensen of Rutgers Camden Law Library; Professor Bruce Kennedy of the University of Toledo College of Law; and Dean Peter W. Martin of Cornell University Law School.

In a position paper, Dean Martin proposes two principal goals for UniversalCitation.org:

• (1) seek to persuade U.S. jurisdictions that have not yet adopted a non-proprietary legal citation standard to do so; and
• (2) create an online citation server, that could receive a citation (proprietary or non-proprietary) for any U.S. court decision, and output a non-proprietary citation for the decision; hotlinks to non-proprietary and proprietary sources of full text of the decision; and hypertext code — linking to the citation server — for use by case management systems and drafters of legal documents.

The citation server would be modeled on a similar service that is currently offered by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. (Click here to see how LII’s citation server generates multiple full-text access options for 397 U.S. 150.)

Dean Martin’s proposal currently calls for the citation server to be limited to appellate court decisions. Yet in many areas of U.S. law (including civil procedure, evidence, corporate law, and bankruptcy law), trial-level decisions are frequently cited and serve as valuable precedent. Accordingly, I encourage UniversalCitation.org to include trial court decisions, as well as appellate decisions, in the citation server. (Respecting civil procedure and evidence, decisions of federal and state trial courts serve as persuasive authority. In the corporate context, consider the role played by decisions of the Delaware Chancery Court in many jurisdictions. Respecting U.S. bankruptcy law, federal district court decisions often serve as first-level appellate decisions respecting rulings of bankruptcy courts, and bankruptcy litigation papers and court decisions frequently cite decisions of bankruptcy courts as persuasive authority.)

A list of individuals attending the July 25 meeting, or expressing support for the project, appears on the project’s Website.

For more information, please see the UniversalCitation.org Website.

DuCharme on Linking Linked Data to U.S. Law

Bob DuCharme of TopQuadrant has posted Linking Linked Data to U.S. Law, on his bobdc blog.

In this post, Mr. DuCharme discusses approaches to “[a]utomating conversion of [legal] citations into URLs.” The post cites examples and contributions from many members of the legal informatics community, including the Law Library of Congress and their THOMAS system, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), the Legal Information Institute and its VoxPopuLII blog, Justia, Sean McGrath of Propylon, Joe Carmel‘s LegisLink system, and ITTIG/CNR‘s URN:LEX legal identifier standard.

Click here for other resources on Linked Data and law.

HT @freemoth.

UniversalCitation.org: A New Non-Proprietary Legal Citation Project

UniversalCitation.org is a new, U.S.-based effort to urge governments to adopt non-proprietary legal citation standards, and to create new technologies that process and output non-proprietary legal citation information.

According to the project’s Website, the organizers of this effort are Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School; John Joergensen of Rutgers Camden Law Library; Professor Bruce Kennedy of the University of Toledo College of Law; and Dean Peter W. Martin of Cornell University Law School.

In a position paper posted this week, Dean Martin proposes two principal goals for UniversalCitation.org:

• (1) seek to persuade U.S. jurisdictions that have not yet adopted a non-proprietary legal citation standard to do so; and
• (2) create an online citation server, that could receive a citation (proprietary or non-proprietary) for any U.S. court decision, and output a non-proprietary citation for the decision; hotlinks to non-proprietary and proprietary sources of full text of the decision; and hypertext code — linking to the citation server — for use by case management systems and drafters of legal documents.

The citation server would be modeled on a similar service that is currently offered by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. (Click here to see how LII’s citation server generates multiple full-text access options for 397 U.S. 150.)

Dean Martin’s proposal currently calls for the citation server to be limited to appellate court decisions. Yet in many areas of U.S. law (including civil procedure, evidence, corporate law, and bankruptcy law), trial-level decisions are frequently cited and serve as valuable precedent. Accordingly, I encourage UniversalCitation.org to include trial court decisions, as well as appellate decisions, in the citation server. (Respecting civil procedure and evidence, decisions of federal and state trial courts serve as persuasive authority. In the corporate context, consider the role played by decisions of the Delaware Chancery Court in many jurisdictions. Respecting U.S. bankruptcy law, federal district court decisions often serve as first-level appellate decisions respecting rulings of bankruptcy courts, and bankruptcy litigation papers and court decisions frequently cite decisions of bankruptcy courts as persuasive authority.)

An organizational meeting for UniversalCitation.org will be held 25 July 2011, at the Rutgers Camden Law School. A list of individuals attending the July 25 meeting, or expressing support for the project, appears on the project’s Website.

For more information, please see the UniversalCitation.org Website.

URN:LEX Illustrative Examples: US Law

Several examples of how the URN:LEX legal identifier standard can be applied to US legal documents, have been posted on LexCraft, the wiki for sharing best practices in legal information systems development, hosted by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.

URN:LEX is one of the legal metadata standards proposed to be used in the Law.gov legal open government data project.

The URN:LEX examples available so far on LexCraft cover:

• U.S. federal statutes, regulations, and case law;
• U.S. state statutes and case law; and
• U.S. municipal ordinances.

Further, a discussion of the use of URN:LEX is now taking place on LexCraft.

To participate in this discussion, or to add further examples, if you’re not already a LexCraft member, one need only register as a LexCraft member. Registration is free. Click here to register on LexCraft.

Click here for more information about URN:LEX.

Click here for more information about LexCraft.

Click here for more information about Law.gov.