ITTIG CNR Law Making Environment Perspectives C Biagioli

ITTIG - CNR Law Making Environment Perspectives C. Biagioli, L. Bacci, E. Francesconi, F. Turchi ITTIG-CNR Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica A. Cappelli ISTI-CNR Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell’Informazione V Legislative XML Workshop Fiesole, 14 – 16 June 2006

Overview • Law-Making Environment – Tools for the “Legislator” based on semantic models; • Model of Provisions and Arguments; • Software architecture of a module for Planning a new bill; • Conclusions.

Legislation management: State of the Art • Upkeep of current legislation through URN and XML standards; • This guarantees: – – Web accessibility of new and legacy contents; Interoperability among applications; Advanced search and retrieval services based on semantics; Automatic consolidation; • The most part of tools dealing with standards for legislation are addressed to documentalists rather than to the Legislator;

Purposes • Providing the Law-Maker with a set of drafting tools allowing to plan organic and well structure bills; • Strategy: – Ex-ante (Lachmayer) management of the semantics; • Benefits: – planning a new organic bill from a conceptual (semantic) point of view; – Metadata are directly inserted by the Legislator • they will be “authentic” metadata;

Semantic Model • Model of Provisions and Arguments: – Amendments (Insertion, Abrogation, Substitution); – Rules (Obligation, Prohibition, Penalties, Exceptions, …); and their Arguments; • It is a standard within the “Norme in Rete” DTDs/XMLSchema;

NIR-DTD document description • The NIR standards describe a legislative text under two profiles: – the formal profile: • It considers a law text as made up of divisions; • It describes the physical structure of a document; – the functional profile: • It considers a normative text as composed by elementary components called provisions (fragment of a regulation); • It is described by provisions types and their arguments; • It describes the logical structure of a document.

A fragment of legislative text viewed according to the formal and the functional profile Article 7 (Notification) 1. 2. A controller intending to process personal data falling within the scope of application of this Act shall have to notify the Garante thereof… The notification shall have to be given… Formal profile Division (or Paragraph) Functional Profile Type of provision: “Obligation” Arguments: Addressee: “Controller” Action: “Notification” Counter-party: “Garante”

Legislative Document within the NIR environment Article 1 (Purposes and definitions) … 2. For the purposes of this Act: Definition(definiendum =“data bank”, definiens= “any set of personal data…”) a) "data bank" shall mean any set of personal data, … … Article 7 (Notification) Obligation(addressee=“controller”, action =“notification”, counter-party=“Garante”) 1. A controller intending to process personal data falling within the scope of application of this Act shall have to notify the Garante thereof … Article 42 (Amendments to laws in force ) Substitution(norm=“urn: …”, novellando=“paragraph 1 of article 4”, novella= “#…”) 2. For paragraph 1 of article 4 of legislative decree no. 39 of 12 February 1993 there shall be substituted the following: “ 1. An Authority for information technology in the public administration…”

LME: Tools for Law Makers URN, XML Standards Drafting Meta Drafting Provision Models Domain Keywords Editor Planning (structure) Provisions types Argument Keywords XML Partitions Skeleton DB Provisions Editor Aggregation (wording) Queries on provisions XML Partitions Skeleton and Text XML Partitions Skeleton and Semantics Generationw meta. Edit o r r o (semantic markup) y a d to Automatic provisions wording XML Text (Structure and Semantics) m o t

xm. Leges. Editor to y a d

Semantic Mark. Up: Meta. Edit to y a d

Semantic Mark. Up: Meta. Edit Arguments of the chosen provision type

Semantic Mark. Up: Meta. Edit Filling the Argument

Semantic Mark. Up: Meta. Edit Semantic markup view

Meta. Drafting: LME Project • Planning; • Aggregation; • Generation. w o m o t r r o

Planning basic elements 1. Model of Provisions and Arguments; 2. Ontology of concepts and terms of the scenario to be regulated; 3. Definition manager; 4. Visual panel where provisions types and their arguments can be handle as visual objects;

1. Model of Provisions and Arguments sub. Class. Of Provision Regulative Object. Property Obligation has. Counter. Party has. Addressee has. Action Addressee Counter-party Action OWL description of the provision taxonomy; <owl: Class rdf: ID=“Provision”> <owl: Class rdf: ID=“Regulative”> <rdfs: sub. Class. Of rdf: resource="#Provision”/> <owl: Class rdf: ID=“Obligation”> <rdfs: sub. Class. Of rdf: resource="#Regulative”/> … <owl: Class rdf: ID=“Addressee”/> <owl: Class rdf: ID=“Action”/> <owl: Class rdf: ID=“Counter-party”/> … <owl: Object. Property rdf: ID="has. Addressee”> <rdfs: domain rdf: resource="#Obligation”/> <rdfs: range rdf: resource="#Addressee”/> </owl: Object. Property>

2. Ontology of concepts and terms of the scenario to be regulated • Two levels: – Ontology (classes of legal concepts); – Lexicon (terms as instantiations of legal concepts); • These terms are used to provide values to the provision arguments. Legal act has_hyperonym Notification has_hyponym Notice

3. Definition Manager • Specific terms of the domain of interest not contained in the vocabulary can be inserted and defined using a Definition Manager; • Also these new terms can be used to provide values to the provision arguments.

4. Visual Panel • Panel where to handle: – Provision Types as visual objects; – Provision Arguments whose values are terms from the “Definition Manager”; File Edit View Insert Options Help

Planning visual panel File Edit View Insert Options … Help Provision > Constitutives … Regulatives > Obligation Amendments Procedure Penalty … Obligation Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: Definition Manager Semantic. Net ‘data bank’ - Legal act shall mean … ‘personal data’ - Notification shall mean any - Notice information relating to natural or Legal persons…

Planning visual panel File Edit View Insert Obligation Addreesee: Controller Action: Notification Counter-party: Garante Procedure Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: Options … Help Definition Definiendum: Data bank Definiens: … Derogation Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: Definition Definiendum: Personal data Definiens: …

Aggregation: from Provision Instances to Groups of Partitions GROUP INTO Provision. Types = “Definition” an Article GROUP Provision. Type = “Obligation” Provision. Type = “Procedure” Provision. Type = “Derogation” Argument = “Action” content = “Notification” an Article WHERE INTO AND AND

Aggregation File Edit View Insert Options … Paragraph Definition Definiendum: Controller Definiens: … Obligation Addreesee: Controller Action: Notification Counter-party: Garante Paragraph Procedure Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: … Paragraph Article Help Derogation Addreesee: Action: Notification Counter-party: … Paragraph Definition Definiendum: Data bank Definiens: … Article

Aggregation Criteria Formal and Functional profiles of a “wellstructured” documents Capo I Art. 1. 2. 3. [DEFINITION] Art. 5. 1. 2. 3. … [OBLIGATION, Arguments X, Y] [PROCEDURE, Arguments X, Y] [DEROGATION, Arguments X, Y] Art. 16 1. 2. [PENALTY] • A legislative text where the functional structure fits well the chosen formal structure; • “Well-structured” normative documents: Stuctural partitions contain semantically correlated partitions according to several criteria;

Semantics Structure Document Construction Formal profile Part. Of Document (Law) Concrete Chapter Article Chapter … Article Chapter Article … … Paragraph Definition Paragraph Obligation Paragraph Procedure Derogation Functional profile

XML Skeleton <? xml version="1. 0" encoding="iso-8859 -1"? > <!DOCTYPE NIR SYSTEM 'nircompleto. dtd'> … <capo id=“cap 1”> <disposizioni> <analitiche> <dsp: definizione> <dsp: definiendum>Personal data<dsp: definiendum> </dsp: definizione> … <articolo id=“art 1”> </articolo> … </capo> <capo id=“cap 2”> <disposizioni> <analitiche> <dsp: obbligo> <dsp: destinatario>Controller</dsp: destinatario> <dsp: azione>Notification</dsp: azione> … </dsp: definizione> … <articolo id=“art 7”> </articolo> … </capo> … Editor view Law n. Chapter 1 Art. 1 1. [to be filled] 2. [to be filled] … Definition(Controller, …) Definition(Data bank, …) Chapter 2 Art. 7 1. [to be filled] 2. [to be filled] 3. [to be filled] Obligation(Controller, Notification, Garante) Procedure(. . , Notification, . . ) Derogation(. . , Notification, . . )

Generation • Aims: – Supporting provision generation • Features: – Provision text generation on the basis of • The grammar of a specific provision type • The content of the arguments

Grammar of each provision type • EBNF productions for each type of provisions 1) 5) <Provision. Type> <Definition> | <Competence> | <Obligation> <Permission> | <Procedure> | <Penalty> … 2) <Definition> <Definition syntactical structure> 3) <Competence> <Competence syntactical structure> … … <Obligation> • Each specific syntactical structure is related to the structure of the arguments of each provision type 2) 3) 4) <Obligation syntactical structure>

Benefits of “Generation” • More clear legislative texts; • It limits the ambiguity of texts; • It helps legislative drafting even for unexpert users as regards legislative technique;

XML Partitions Skeleton and Semantics Generation Law n. XML Text (Structure and Semantics) Law n. Chapter 1 Art. 1 1. [to be filled] 2. [to be filled] … Definition(Controller, …) Definition(Data bank, …) Chapter 2 Art. 7 Obligation(Controller, Notification, Garante) 1. [to be filled] 2. [to be filled] 3. [to be filled] Procedure(. . , Notification, . . ) Derogation(. . , Notification, . . ) Definition(Controller, …) 1. "controller" shall mean any natural or legal person bank, …) Definition(Data 2. "data bank" shall mean any set of personal data … … Chapter 2 Art. 7 Obligation(Controller, Notification, Garante) 1. A controller. . shall have to notify the Garante … Procedure(. . , Notification, . . ) 2. The notification shall have to be given in Derogation(. . , Notification, . . ) advance …

Uses of the Provision Models • Drafting Law. Making. Environment – To provide a semantic guide for planning a new bill. • Consolidation – Management of amendments; • Searching Meta. Search – To query a legal information system according to a semantic point of view;

meta. Search Text Provision types Argument keywords

meta. Search Retrieved provisions Related derogations

Conclusions • The LME is aimed at supporting the Law-Maker in planning a new bill from a conceptual point of view; • The classical process of drafting is reverted: Traditional drafting structure text content semantic markup Ex Post Meta-drafting semantic markup Ex Ante structure text content