The SEKT Legal Use Case Components: Ontology and Architecture (original) (raw)

SEKT legal use case components: ontology and architectural design

Proceedings of ICAIL, 2005

SEKT stands for Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies (EU-IST Project IST-2003-506826). Using previous and recently accomplished work on judicial and transnational lawyering prototypes (IURISERVICE and NETCASE Projects), we define an ontology of professional legal knowledge (OPLK) as a regular base for a multilayered architecture. The main idea is to build up an iFAQ to convey practical legal knowledge from more experienced judges to younger ones in their first appointment. This must be considered a preliminary or first approach. The ontology is still under development. 1 The Observatory results from a coordinate project between different research groups and universitiesnamely the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the University of Barcelona (UB), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Intelligent Software Components (iSOCO) and the directive board of the Spanish School of the Judiciary [Escuela Judicial Española, Consejo General del Poder Judicial]

Ontologies of professional legal knowledge as the basis for intelligent it support for judges

Artificial Intelligence and Law, 2004

In this paper, we describe the use of legal ontologies as a basis to improve IT support for professional judges. As opposed to most legal ontologies designed so far, which are mostly based on dogmatic and normative knowledge, we emphasize the importance of professional knowledge and experience as an important pillar for constructing the ontology. We describe an intelligent FAQ system for junior judges that intensively uses the ontology. * Intelligent Software Components (iSOCO), Spain,

Semantic Technology for Professional Judicial Knowledge

Semantic Knowledge Management

An iFAQ (intelligent Frequently Asked Questions) system designed to provide assistance to young judges at their first appointment is described. The development and use of legal domain ontologies is described. The functionality of the system is set out, along with the system architecture. The methodology and results of a system evaluation are also reported.

Ontologies and Legal Knowledge-Based Systems Development

2007

Today Ontologies are widely discussed in AI and Law. Leading AI conferences such as ICAIL and Jurix regularly feature sessions on ontologies, often they have related workshops devoted to ontologies and recently AI and Law journal devoted a substantial special issue to the topic. In this paper I wish to discuss the origins of ontologies in AI and Law, and, given the occasion, point to the role of Jaap van den Herik in their development.

Ontologies in the Legal Domain

Integrated Series In Information Systems, 2008

Since the emergence of the Semantic Web building ontologies have become quite popular and almost every conference on information science including artificial intelligence and e-Government have tracks that cover (legal) ontologies. Ontologies are the vocabularies that can be used to describe a universe of discourse. In this chapter we want to explain the roles (legal) ontologies play in the field of legal information systems and (juridical) knowledge management. We emphasize the fact that these ontologies are social constructs that can be used to express shared meaning within a community of practice and also have a normative character. Many different ontologies have been created for similar and different purposes and two of them, both core ontologies of law that specify knowledge that is common to all domains of law, will be explained in more detail. The first one, is a Functional Ontology for Law (FOLaw). This ontology describes and explains dependencies between types of knowledge in legal reasoning. FOLaw is rather an epistemological framework than an ontology, since it is concerned with the roles knowledge plays in legal reasoning rather than with legal knowledge itself. Nevertheless FOLaw has shown some practical value in various applied European ICT projects, but its reuse is rather limited. We will also explain some aspects of the LRI-Core ontology which captures the main concepts in legal information processing. LRI-Core is particularly inspired by research on abstract commonsense concepts. Legal knowledge is based upon these commonsense concepts. Since legal knowledge always refers to the 'real world', although in abstract terms, the main categories of LRI-Core are physical, mental and abstract concepts. Roles cover in particular social worlds. Another special category is occurrences; terms that denote events and situations. In this chapter we illustrate the use of LRI-Core with an ontology for Dutch criminal law, developed in the e-Court European project and an ontology for Dutch administrative law developed in a project for the Dutch State Council.

LKIF Core: Principled ontology development for the legal domain

2009

In this paper we describe a legal core ontology that is part of the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format: a knowledge representation formalism that enables the translation of legal knowledge bases written in different representation formats and formalisms. A legal (core) ontology can play an important role in the translation of existing legal knowledge bases to other representation formats, in particular as the basis for articulate knowledge serving. This requires that the ontology has a firm grounding in commonsense and is developed in a principled manner. We describe the theory and methodology underlying the LKIF core ontology, compare it with other ontologies, introduce the concepts it defines, and discuss its use in the formalisation of an EU directive.

Iuriservice ii: Ontology development and architectural design

Proceedings of the 10th …, 2005

In the legal domain, ontologies enjoy quite some reputation as a way to model normative knowledge about laws and jurisprudence. While there is a multitude of ontological models to represent theoretical legal knowledge, no previous attempt to construct ontologies based on professional knowledge exists, capturing judicial expertise. We define the epistemological and ontological levels as separate issues.

Ontologies in Legal Information Systems

2000

In this paper we ,discuss the ,role of explicit specifications of domain ,conceptualisations ,- now popularly called "ontologies" - in,legal i nformation systems. We describe the advantages that accrue from producing an on tology for such systems, as well as the ontologies so far developed which are directed at t he legal domain. We ,then ,illustrate ,how ,taking ,an

A comparison of four ontologies for the design of legal knowledge systems

1998

There is a growing interest in how people conceptualise the legal domain for the purpose of legal knowledge systems. In this paper we discuss four such conceptualisations (referred to as ontologies): McCarty's language for legal discourse, Stamper's norma formalism, Valente's functional ontology of law, and the ontology of Van Kralingen and Visser. We present criteria for a comparison of the ontologies and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ontologies in relation to these criteria.