Abstract
The increasing development of legal ontologies seems to offer interesting solutions to legal knowledge formalization, which in past experiences lead to a limited exploitation of legal expert systems for practical use. The paper describes how a constructive approach to ontology can provide useful components to create newly designed legal decision support systems either as local or Web-based semantic services. We describe the relation of our research to AI&Law and legal philosophy, the components of our Core Legal Ontology, the JurWordNet semantic lexicon, and some examples of use of legal ontologies for both norm conformity and compatibility. Our legal ontologies are based on DOLCE+, an extension of the DOLCE foundational ontology developed in the WonderWeb and Metokis EU projects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Winkels, R. (ed.): Second International Workshop on Legal Ontologies (LEGONT), at the Jurix Conference (2002), http://lri.jur.uva.nl/winkels/legont.html
Breuker, J., Gangemi, A., Tiscornia, D., Winkels, R. (eds.): ICAIL03 Wks on Legal Ontologies, Edinburgh (2003), http://lri.jur.uva.nl/winkels/legontICAIL2003.html
Jarrar, M., Salaun, A. (eds.): First Workshop on Regulatory Ontologies, OTM Workshops. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Jarrar, M., Gangemi, A. (eds.): Second Workshop on Regulatory Ontologies, OTM Workshops. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Benjamins, R., Casanovas, P., Breuker, J., Gangemi, A.: Law and the Semantic Web. Springer, Berlin (2004)
Sagri, M.T., Tiscornia, D., Gangemi, A.: An Ontology-based Approach for Representing “Bundle-of-rights”. In: Jarrar, M., Gangemi, A. (eds.) Second International Workshop on Regulatory Ontologies, in OTM Workshops. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Gangemi, A., Prisco, A., Sagri, M.T., Steve, G., Tiscornia, D.: Some ontological tools to support legal regulatory compliance, with a case study. In: Jarrar, M., et al. (eds.) Proceedings of the WORM03 Workshop at OTM Conference. Springer, Berlin (2003)
Alexy, R.: A Theory of Legal Argumentation. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1989)
Allen, L.E., Saxon, C.S.: Analysis of the Logical Structure of Legal Rules by a Modernized and Formalized Version of Hohfeld’s Fundamental Legal Conceptions. In: Martino, A.A., Socci, F.S. (eds.) Automated Analysis of Legal Texts, North-Holland, Amsterdam (1986)
Kowalski, R., Sergot, M.: The Use of Logical Models in Legal Problem Solving. In: Narayan, A., Bennum, M. (eds.) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Ablex (1989)
Sergot, M.: The Representation of Law in Computer Programs. In: Capon, T.B. (ed.) Knowledge Based Systems and legal Applications, pp. 3–68. Academic Press, London (1991)
Antoniou, G., Billington, D., Governatori, G., Maher, M.J.: Representation results for defeasible logic. ACM Transactions on Computational Logic 2(2) (2001)
Hamfelt, A., Barklund, J.: Hierarchical Representation of Legal Knowledge with Metaprogramming in logic. In: Proceedings of First Compulog-NetWorkshop, Imperial College, London (1992)
Bench Capon, T.J.M., Coenen, F.P.: Isomorphism and Legal Knowledge-based systems. Artificial Intelligence and Law: An International Journal 1(1), 65–86 (1992)
Jones, A., Sergot, M.: On the Characterization of Law and Computer Sustems: The Normative Systems Perspective. In: a cura di J. Meyer, Ch., e Wieringa, R.J.: Deontic Logic in Computer Science. Wiley, UK (1993)
Kolodner, J.L.: Case-based reasoning. Morgan Kaufmann, Calif. (1993)
Breuker, J., den Haan, N.: Separating world and regulation knowledge: where is the logic. In: Sergot, M. (ed.) Processing of the third internetional conference on AI and Law, Association of Computing Machinery, New York (1991)
Chisholm, R.M.: Contrary to duty imperative and deontic logic. Analysis 24 (1963)
Hohfeld, W.N.: Some fundamental legal conceptions as applied in legal reasoning. Yale Law Journal XXIII(1), 16–59 (1913)
Jones, A., Sergot, M.: A Formal Characterisation of Institutional Power. Journal of IGPL 4(3), 429–445 (1996)
Bowen, K.A., Kowalski, R.: Amalgamating Language and Metalanguage in Logic Programming. In: Tarnlund, C. (ed.) Logic Programming, pp. 153–172. Academic Press, London (1982)
Moore, M.: Legal Reality: A Naturalist Approach to Legal Ontology. Law and Philosophy 21, 619–705 (2002)
Forbus, K., Mostek, T., Ferguson, R.: An analogy ontology for integrating analogical processing and first-principles reasoning. In: Proceedings of AAAI 2002 (2002)
Karmiloff-Smith, A.: Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. MIT Press, Cambridge (1992)
Gangemi, A., Mika, P.: Understanding the Semantic Web through Descriptions and Situation. In: Meersman, R., et al. (eds.) Proceedings of ODBASE 2003. Springer, Berlin (2003)
Masolo, C., Vieu, L., Bottazzi, E., Catenacci, C., Ferrario, R., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N.: Social Roles and their Descriptions. In: Welty, Dubois (eds.) Proceedings of the International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, KR (2004)
Masolo, C., Borgo, S., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Oltramari, A.: The WonderWeb Library of Foundational Ontologies, IST 2001-33052 Wonder Web (2003), http://wonderweb.semanticweb.org/deliverables/documents/D18.pdf
Gangemi, A., Catenacci, C., Lehmann, J., Borgo, S.: Task taxonomies for knowledge content, EU 6FP METOKIS Project, D07 (2004), http://metokis.salzburgresearch.at
Baader, F., Calvanese, D., McGuinness, D., Nardi, D., Patel-Schneider, P. (eds.): Description logic handbook. Cambridge UP, Cambridge (2002)
Eco, U.: Kant e l’ornitorinco, Milano, Bompiani (1997)
Visser, P., Capon, T.B.: Ontologies in the Design of Legal Knowledge Systems, towards a Library of Legal Domain Ontologies. In: Proceedings of Jurix 1999, Leuven, Belgique (1999)
Dean, M., Schreiber, G.: Owl web ontology language reference, W3c candidaterecommendation, World Wide Web Consortium (August 2003)
Hart, H.L.A.: The Concept of Law. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1961)
Alchourrón, C.E., Buligyn, E.: Normative System. Springer, Wien (1971)
Searle, J.: The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press, N.Y. (1995)
Gangemi, A., Bottazzi, E., Catenacci, C., Lehmann, J.: From Collective Intentionality to Intentional Collectives: An Ontological Perspective. In: Castelfranchi, C., Tummolini, L. (eds.) International Conference on Collective Intentionality (2004)(to appear)
Lindhal, L.: Position and Change. A study in Law and Logic (1977)
Kanger, S.: Law and Logic. Theoria 38, 105–132 (1972)
Jones, A.: A logical Framework. In: Pitt, J. (ed.) Open Agents Societies: Normative Specifications in Multi-Agent Systems. Wiley and Sons, Chichester (2003)
Pörn, I.: Action Theory and Social Science. In: Some Formal Models. Reidel, Dordrechtz (1977)
Lehmann, J., Borgo, S., Masolo, C., Gangemi, A.: Causality and Causation in DOLCE. In: Vieu, L., Varzi, A.C. (eds.) Third International Conference on Formal Ontology and Information Systems (FOIS 2004). IOS Press, Amsterdam (2004)
Sagri, M.T.: Progetto per lo sviluppo di una rete lessicale giuridica on line attraverso la specializzazione di ItalWordnet, in Informatica e Diritto, ESI, Napoli (2003)
Roventini, A., Alonge, A., Bertagna, F., Calzolari, N., et al.: ItalWordNet: Building a Large Semantic Database for the Automatic Treatment of Italian. In: “Linguistica Computazionale”, Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, Pisa-Roma (2000)
Vossen, P. (ed.): EuroWordNet A Multilingual Database with Lexical Semantic Networks. Kluwer Academic publishers, Dordrecht (1998)
Fellbaum, C. (ed.): WordNet: An electronic lexical database. MIT Press, Cambridge (1998)
Gangemi, A., Battaglia, M., Catenacci, C.: The Inflammation Ontology Design Pattern. In: Pisanelli, D.M. (ed.) Biomedical Ontologies. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2004)
Boer, A., van Engers, T., Winkels, R.: Using Ontologies for Comparing and Harmonizing Legislation. In: Proceedings of the 9th ICAIL Conference, Edinburgh (2003)
Gärdenfors, P.: The Dynamics of Normative Systems (1989)
Biagioli C.: An XML editor for Legislative drafting. JURIX wks on E-Government (2002)
Sartor, G.: Legal Reasoning and Normative Conflicts. In: Reasoning with Inconsistency (1991)
Gangemi, A., Pisanelli, D.M., Steve, G.: A Formal Ontology Framework to represent Norm Dynamics. In: Proc. of Second International Workshop on Legal Ontologies, Amsterdam (2001)
Ross, A.: Directives and Norms, London (1968)
McCormick, N.: Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1978)
Dworkin, R.: Taking Rights Seriously, 2nd edn. Duckworth, London (1978)
von Wright, G.E.: Norm and Action. Routledge, London (1963)
Valente, A., Breuker, J.: A Functional Ontology of Law. In: Preatti del Convegno del Venticinquennale IDG, Firenze, pp. 3–6 (1993)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gangemi, A., Sagri, MT., Tiscornia, D. (2005). A Constructive Framework for Legal Ontologies. In: Benjamins, V.R., Casanovas, P., Breuker, J., Gangemi, A. (eds) Law and the Semantic Web. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3369. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32253-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32253-5_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25063-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32253-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)