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Use and Reuse of Legal Ontologies in Knowledge Engineering and Information Management

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Book cover Law and the Semantic Web

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3369))

Abstract

In this article we present an overview of legal ontological modeling over a period of more than a decade. Most of the research reported concerns results from mid-size (European) projects aimed at the development of legal reasoning and information management tools and systems. In these projects we developed ontologies for several legal or regulation domains. However, the main thread of this article is provided by fundamental research performed by us or under our supervision (e.g. PhD theses by [1], [2], [3]), leading to more abstract legal ‘core’ ontologies and legal reasoning architectures. The major insights we have obtained from these experiences can be summarized as follows:

  • Legal sources contain and assume non-legal, common-sense based domain knowledge. Therefore, a legal core ontology should be rooted in highly abstract common sense concepts as a foundational ontology. This notion is worked out in the LRI-Core ontology, presented in this article.

  • What remains as typical legal knowledge to be modelled is normative and legal responsability knowledge. However, in this article we only summarize our work in this area, refering to [4] and to [5] on these issues.

  • As law and legal theory is focussed on questions of justification, legal (core) ontologies, e.g. FOLaw, are epistemological frameworks, describing legal reasoning, rather than legal ontologies, explaining knowledge resources.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Center for Law, Faculy of Law, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 1030, NL 1000 BA, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Joost Breuker & Radboud Winkels

  2. Knowledge Systems Ventures, 7707 Boeing Ave, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, USA

    André Valente

Authors
  1. Joost Breuker
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  2. André Valente
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  3. Radboud Winkels
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. iSOCO, P.O. Box, Spain

    V. Richard Benjamins

  2. Institute of Law and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Pompeu Casanovas

  3. Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam,  

    Joost Breuker

  4. Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technology, Italian Research Council (ISTC-CNR), Via Nomentana 56, 00161, Rome, Italy

    Aldo Gangemi

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Breuker, J., Valente, A., Winkels, R. (2005). Use and Reuse of Legal Ontologies in Knowledge Engineering and Information Management. 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_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32253-5_4

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