The Summer of Codes: Many new U.S. state and municipal legislative codes posted free on Web by Public.Resource.Org

Public.Resource.Org has posted legislative codes for several U.S. states and localities, free on the Web, making summer 2013 the Summer of Codes.

The data are available in various formats, including XML, PDF, HTML, and RTF.

Legislative codes have been posted for the following U.S. states and the District of Columbia:

• Arkansas
• Colorado
• District of Columbia
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Maryland
• Mississippi

Municipal or county codes have been posted for the following U.S. localities:

• Baltimore County
• Boston
• Chicago
• Cleveland
• Los Angeles
• Philadelphia
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• Sonoma County

Examples of how developers can use open legislative codes like these include:

• Tom MacWright‘s Unlocking the DC Code;
• Robb Shecter‘s projects for Oregon, California, Texas, and New York;
• Waldo Jaquith‘s The State Decoded projects for Virginia, Florida, and Maryland;
• Michael Bommarito‘s Michigan Compiled Laws in XML;
• John Joergensen‘s New Jersey Statutes.

HT @waldojaquith

Applications invited for LEX Summer School 2013: Managing Legal Resources in the Semantic Web

Applications are invited for LEX Summer School 2013: Managing Legal Resources in the Semantic Web, to be held 2-7 September 2013 in Ravenna, Italy.

The summer school will be followed by the Akoma Ntoso Developers Workshop, 9-10 September 2013, in Ravenna.

Here is the description:

The school aims at providing knowledge of the most significant ICT standards emerging for legislation, judiciary, parliamentary and administrative documents. The course provides understanding of their impact in the different phases of the legislative and administrative process, awareness of the tools based on legal XML standards and of their constellations, and the ability to participate in the drafting and use of standard-compliant documents throughout law-making process. In particular we would like to create consciousness in the stakeholders in the legal domain about the benefits and the possibilities provided by the correct usage of Semantic Web technologies such as XML standards, ontologies, natural language processing techniques applied to legal texts, legal knowledge modelling and reasoning tools.

This edition of the LeX Summer School is organized in two courses:

• A Basic Course providing an introduction to XML web technologies and to basic technologies for drafting and managing standard-compliant legislative and legal documents;
• An Advanced Course providing in-depth analysis of the higher levels of Semantic Web technologies and of their application to the legal domain: modelling of modifications, procedures and legal knowledge;
• A workshop of two days for “Akoma Ntoso Tool Developers” focused on the technical issues.

LeX is an intensive 6-day, 8-hour-a-day program, that requires participants’ total dedication and intellectual commitment.

The program’s learning process assists participants to develop knowledge, skills and capabilities in using and managing shared and interoperable standards for legislative document enabling access, communication, processing, modelling, representing and integration of legislation through IT technologies, in an open and cooperative framework.

Teaching Objectives

Good management of legal documents involves at least six aspects:

• Drafting methods, to improve the language and structure of legislative texts;
• Legal XML standards, to improve the accessibility and interoperability of legal resources;
• Legal ontologies, to capture legal metadata and legal semantics;
• Legal Knowledge extraction using natural language techniques;
• Formal representation of legal contents, to support legal reasoning and argumentation;
• Workflow models, to cope with the lifecycle of legal documents.

The summer school will address all of these aspects, through multi- and interdisciplinary competences. It will provide and integrated approach to the management of legal documentation, as a core aspect of legislative and administrative innovation.

Target Group

We seek applicants who are interested in legal drafting and electronic management of legal resources and who plan to work in this area in the public administration, private sector or research fields.

LEX is designed primarily for officers of legislative bodies and other normative authorities (at international, national, regional and local levels), but it addresses also to drafters of normative texts in the private sector, editors, publishers, documentalists dealing with legal sources, experts in the electronic management of legal texts, students and researchers working in legal informatics and le’gislation studies.

For the technical people and for the tool developers the “Akoma Ntoso Tool Devs” workshop is a great occasion of networking.

HT Professor Dr. Monica Palmirani

Request for Input: Hershowitz and Vergottini: Legislative Data: The Book

Ari Hershowitz, Esq., of Tabulaw, says that he and Grant Vergottini of Xcential Group have begun to write a book about legislative data, and they are inviting input.

Ari writes, in his new post, First Commit: Legislative Data, the Book:

[...] I’ve created a GitHub repository with our first commit. And a wiki with my very first draft of a table of contents: https://github.com/aih/LegislativeDataBook/wiki/Table-of-Contents

We’ll cover legislative data standards (e.g. Akoma Ntoso, SLIM), data format wars (html, xml, json, rdf), policy (e.g. DATA Act) and drafting decisions, positive law codification, open government and transparency, tools of the trade and more. Take a look and see what I’ve missed or what I’ve messed up.

Because it’s on Github, you can make a branch, make suggestions or even a pull request. Suggest a new chapter, suggest a better title or subtitle for an existing chapter. Write a first draft or prepare to comment on our drafts (which may or may not be committed first on Github before publishing– a lot may change after Grant reads this post). Or leave your comments here. And if you make extensive comments or edits, maybe that means that you should go ahead and write your own d#&!n book. Or join us as a co-author. [...]

For more details, please see the complete post.

HT @arihersh

Call for Papers: JURIX 2013: International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 2 September 2013 — has been posted for JURIX 2013: International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, to be held 11-13 December 2013, at the University of Bologna.

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• Support for lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation;
• Support for the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation;
• Support for the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases;
• Support for police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations;
• Support for public administration, in applying regulations and managing information;
• Support for the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods;
• Systems and methods to support policies and legal issues for social networks;
• Retrieval of legal information and eDiscovery;
• Legal education;
• Digital-rights management;
• Alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line;
• Regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes;
• Theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques in the legal domain;
• Models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures;
• Legal inference and argumentation;
• Verification and validation of legal knowledge systems;
• Management of legal information in the semantic web, including legal open data;
• XML standards for legal documents and rules, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts;
• Modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions;
• Methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems;
• Evaluation of systems using advanced informatics techniques in legal applications;
• Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems.

For more details, please see the call for papers.

HT Jurix

Vergottini: XML, HTML, JSON – Choosing the Right Format for Legislative Text

Grant Vergottini of Xcential Group has posted XML, HTML, JSON – Choosing the Right Format for Legislative Text, at Legix.info.

Here are excerpts:

I find I’m often talking about an information model and XML as if they’re the same thing. However, there is no reason to tie these two things together as one. Instead, we should look at the information model in terms of the information it represents and let the manner in which we express that information be a separate concern. In the last few weeks I have found myself discussing alternative forms of representing legislative information with three people – chatting with Eric Mill at the Sunlight Foundation about HTML microformats (look for a blog from him on this topic soon), Daniel Bennett regarding microdata, and Ari Hershowitz regarding JSON.

I thought I would try and open up a discussion on this topic by shedding some light on it. If we can strip away the discussion of the information model and instead focus on the representation, perhaps we can agree on which formats are better for which applications. Is a format a good storage format, a good transport format, a good analysis/programming format, or a good all-around format? [...]

Several examples are given. Then, Grant writes:

[...] There are many different ways of representing the same legislative model – each with its own strength and weaknesses. Different consumers have different needs. While XML is a good all-around format, it also brings with it some degree of sophistication and complexity that many information consumers simply don’t need to tackle. It should be possible, as a consumer, to specify the form of the information that most closely fits my need and have the legislative data source deliver it to me in that format. [...]

What do you think?

For more details, please see the complete post.

HT @arihersh

Nyman-Metcalf and Täks : Simplifying the law: Can ICT help us?

Professor Katrin Nyman-Metcalf and Ermo Täks, both of Tallinn University of Technology, have published Simplifying the law—can ICT help us? forthcoming in International Journal of Law and Information Technology.

Here is the abstract:

The article analyses how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can assist in simplifying law, by visualizing it and structuring it. It describes current research as well as activities by the European Union to make law more accessible by using ICT. The authors offers a new method for visualization of law for its better systematization and use, based on the legal language and its components.

Hallo Carrasco et al.: Data models for version management of legislative documents

María Hallo Carrasco of National Polytechnic School, Ecuador, and Professor Dr. M. Mercedes Martínez-González and Pablo de la Fuente Redondo, both of University of Valladolid, have published Data models for version management of legislative documents, forthcoming in Journal of Information Science.

Here is the abstract:

This paper surveys the main data models used in projects including the management of changes in digital normative legislation. Models have been classified based on a set of criteria, which are also proposed in the paper. Some projects have been chosen as representative for each kind of model. The advantages and problems of each type are analysed, and future trends are identified.

The legislative metadata models discussed in the paper include:

• Agora-Lex
• AKOMA NTOSO
• CEN Metalex
• EnACT
• ESTRELLA General XML format(s) for legal Sources
• Legislation.gov.uk
• Legislative Documents in XML at the United States House of Representatives
• Norma
• Norme in Rete

14-15 March: Wikipedia and Legislative Data Workshop, Washington, DC

Jim Harper, Esq., of the Cato Institute tells us of this interesting event:

Wikipedia and Legislative Data Workshop, 14-15 March, Washington, DC.

Description:

Interested in the bills making their way through Congress?

Think they should be covered well in Wikipedia?

Well, let’s do something about it!

On Thursday and Friday, March 14th and 15th, we are hosting a conference here at the Cato Institute to explore ways of using legislative data to enhance Wikipedia.

Our project to produce enhanced XML markup of federal legislation is well under way [see examples of the XML markup at DeepBills (here and here)], and we hope to use this data to make more information available to the public about how bills affect existing law, federal agencies, and spending, for example.

What better way to spread knowledge about federal public policy than by supporting the growth of Wikipedia content?

Thursday’s session is for all comers. Starting at 2:30 p.m., we will familiarize ourselves with Wikipedia editing and policy, and at 5:30 p.m. we’ll have a Sunshine Week reception. (You don’t need to attend in the afternoon to come to the reception. Register now!)

On Friday, we’ll convene experts in government transparency, in Wikipedia editorial processes and decisions, and in MediaWiki technology to think things through and plot a course.

Do you have relevant interests and experience? Please apply! Applications for participation in the Friday session are due Friday, March 1. [...]

For more information or to register, please see the announcement.

HT @Jim_Harper

Mill: U.S. House of Representatives floor proceedings in bulk XML

Eric Mill of the Sunlight Foundation points us to a new legislative bulk data resource: U.S. House of Representatives’ floor proceedings in bulk XML, 2005 to present (also called House Floor Activities Download).

The announcement of the availability of these data, by the Speaker of the House, states that this is the first project of the new Legislative Branch Bulk Data Task Force.

JURIX 2012: 17-19 December

JURIX 2012: International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems is being held 17-19 December 2012, at Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #jurix2012

Click here for archived Twitter tweets (in .csv format) from the conference.

Click here for the conference program.

Click here for the list of workshops and tutorials.

HT @jurixfoundation