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Eunomos, a legal document and knowledge management system for the Web to provide relevant, reliable and up-to-date information on the law

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Abstract

This paper describes the Eunomos software, an advanced legal document and knowledge management system, based on legislative XML and ontologies. We describe the challenges of legal research in an increasingly complex, multi-level and multi-lingual world and how the Eunomos software helps users cut through the information overload to get the legal information they need in an organized and structured way and keep track of the state of the relevant law on any given topic. Using NLP tools to semi-automate the lower-skill tasks makes this ambitious project a realistic commercial prospect as it helps keep costs down while at the same time allowing greater coverage. We describe the core system from workflow and technical perspectives, and discuss applications of the system for various user groups.

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Notes

  1. http://www.ict4law.org.

  2. http://www.itxlaw.eu.

  3. http://www.eucases.eu.

  4. http://www.liviorobaldo.com/ProLeMAS.htm.

  5. http://www.bo-ecli.eu.

  6. http://www.mirelproject.eu.

  7. Source: ABILab.

  8. United Nations, World e-parliament report 2008: http://www.ictparliament.org/es/node/687.

  9. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/97-589.pdf.

  10. http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/susskind-on-the-end-of-lawyers.

  11. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article7003373.ece.

  12. http://www.ict4law.org.

  13. http://www.itxlaw.eu.

  14. http://www.eucases.eu.

  15. http://www.liviorobaldo.com/ProLeMAS.htm.

  16. http://www.bo-ecli.eu.

  17. http://www.mirelproject.eu.

  18. http://www.normattiva.it.

  19. http://arianna.consiglioregionale.piemonte.it.

  20. http://www.w3.org/RDF.

  21. Although consolidated text from state portals are not usually formally approved by Parliament and thus do not have legal status in themselves, they are the most authoritative consolidated text available.

  22. http://www.smarty.net.

  23. www.xmleges.org.

  24. The Arianna portal already exports documents to NIR XML format.

  25. We specified a maximum distance of 2 words in order to encompass both sentences of the form ‘Il rif1 è soppresso’ (The rif1 is suppressed) and sentences of the form ‘Il rif1 è stato soppresso’ (The rif1 has been suppressed). In Italian, the lemma of both words ‘è’ and ‘stato’ is ‘essere’.

  26. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it.

  27. http://www.liviorobaldo.com/ProLeMAS.htm.

  28. http://www.bo-ecli.eu.

  29. http://www.mirelproject.eu.

  30. http://e-justice.europa.eu/content_european_case_law_identifier_ecli-175-en.do.

  31. http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex.

  32. http://europa.eu.int/celex/eurovoc.

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Acknowledgments

Guido Boella, Luigi Di Caro, and Leendert van der Torre have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 690974 for the project “MIREL: MIning and REasoning with Legal texts”. Livio Robaldo has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 661007 for the project “ProLeMAS: PROcessing LEgal language in normative Multi-Agent Systems”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Guido Boella & Luigi Di Caro

  2. Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Llio Humphreys, Livio Robaldo & Leendert van der Torre

  3. Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy

    Piercarlo Rossi

  4. Nomotika s.r.l., Turin, Italy

    Guido Boella, Luigi Di Caro, Livio Robaldo & Piercarlo Rossi

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  1. Guido Boella
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Correspondence to Livio Robaldo.

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Boella, G., Caro, L.D., Humphreys, L. et al. Eunomos, a legal document and knowledge management system for the Web to provide relevant, reliable and up-to-date information on the law. Artif Intell Law 24, 245–283 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-016-9184-3

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