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Understanding the law: improving legal knowledge dissemination by translating the contents of formal sources of law

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Abstract

Considerable attention has been given to the accessibility of legal documents, such as legislation and case law, both in legal information retrieval (query formulation, search algorithms), in legal information dissemination practice (numerous examples of on-line access to formal sources of law), and in legal knowledge-based systems (by translating the contents of those documents to ready-to-use rule and case-based systems). However, within AI & law, it has hardly ever been tried to make the contents of sources of law, and the relations among them, more accessible to those without a legal education. This article presents a theory about translating sources of law into information accessible to persons without a legal education. It illustrates the theory by providing two elaborated examples of such translation ventures. In the first example, formal sources of law in the domain of exchanging police information are translated into rules of thumb useful for policemen. In the second example, the goal of providing non-legal professionals with insight into legislative procedures is translated into a framework for making available sources of law through an integrated legislative calendar. Although the theory itself does not support automating the several stages described, in this article some hints are given as to what such automation would have to look like.

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Notes

  1. This requires careful and systematic planning. The commission uses a planning cycle consisting of Multiannual Strategic Objectives, an Annual Policy Strategy and Annual Working program. On the basis of this annual working program projects are selected for (preliminary and full) impact assessment (Road Maps). See Commission Decision of 15 November 2005 amending its Rules of Procedure (2005/960/EC, Euratom).

  2. Source: the excellent summary in Wikipedia—procedural summary of the codecision procedure.

  3. See http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/detail_dossier_real.cfm?CL=en&DosId=155818.

  4. Judgment of the Court of 5 February 1963—NV Algemene Transport-en Expeditie Onderneming van Gend & Loos v Netherlands Inland Revenue Administration.—Reference for a preliminary ruling: Tariefcommissie—Pays-Bas.—Case 26–62.

  5. Cf. iate.europa.eu.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Faculty of Law of Leiden University for allowing us to carry out explorative research into legal knowledge dissemination. In addition, we would like to thank three anonymous ICAIL referents for their valuable remarks on the previous version of this article. Finally, the research on the distribution of police data, used as an example in this article, is funded by the ToKeN program of the Research Council for Physical Sciences, part of The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, under number 634.000.017.

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  1. Leiden University, P.O. Box 9520, 2300, RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Laurens Mommers, Wim Voermans, Wouter Koelewijn & Hugo Kielman

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  1. Laurens Mommers
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  2. Wim Voermans
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  3. Wouter Koelewijn
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  4. Hugo Kielman
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Correspondence to Laurens Mommers.

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Mommers, L., Voermans, W., Koelewijn, W. et al. Understanding the law: improving legal knowledge dissemination by translating the contents of formal sources of law. Artif Intell Law 17, 51–78 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-008-9073-5

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