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\title{Scope Statement}
\author{Alexander Boer}
\institute{\defaultaffiliation}
\author{Fabio Vitali}
\institute{Dept. of Computer Science\\University of Bologna\\Italy}
\runningauthor{Alexander Boer}
\correspondingauthor{Alexander Boer}
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\Leibnizreportdate{September 2006}

\abstract{
The CEN workshop on an Open XML interchange format for legal and legislative resources aims to develop a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) on an Open XML interchange format for legal and legislative resources. This document is a detailed statement, on a level suitable for technical development, of the objectives of the workshop and the scope of workshop activities. The statements in this document apply to the workshop agreement to be completed by december 2006. Additional activities are expected, and some of the categories of legal documents explicitly excluded here may be included in later activities.
}


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\maketitle

\section{Introduction}

The CEN workshop on an Open XML interchange format for legal and legislative resources aims to develop a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) on an Open XML interchange format for legal and legislative resources; A CWA is accepted by the CEN and associated standard organisations as a publicly available specification (PAS or pre-norm) for the period of three years, after which the agreement must be renewed or upgraded to a norm.

The business plan agreed by the workshop states the objectives of the workshop. This document is a more detailed statement, on a level suitable for technical development, of the objectives of the workshop and the scope of workshop activities. The statements in this document apply to the workshop agreement to be completed by december 2006. Additional activities are expected, and some of the categories of legal documents explicitly excluded here may be included in later activities. 

\section{Status of this Document}

This document was written by members of the technical subcommittee of the workshop. This document has not been reviewed by workshop members and other interested parties, and it has not been endorsed by the CEN in any way.

\section{ Scope of the Workshop Agreement}

The scope of the proposed standard open XML interchange format for legal and legislative resources can be conceived of in at least two ways:



\begin{enumerate}
	\item In terms of the entities to which the standard applies. A standard regulating the shape of bananas does not apply to apples, for instance.
  \item In terms of the aspects of the entities to which it applies. A standard regulating the shape of bananas does not regulate their colour or taste, for instance. 
\end{enumerate}

The proposed open XML interchange format for legal and legislative resources applies first and foremost to sources of law and to references to sources of law, whether inside or outside a source of law. This is a characterization by role: a source of law is a document that can be, is, was, or presumably will be used to back an argument concerning the existence of a norm or definition in a certain legal system.

This characterization for instance excludes documents used as backing for the verity of a claim concerning a natural fact. These documents play the role of evidence in a court of law, and cannot be considered a source of law.

We are aware that this characterization does not neatly classify contracts, for instance insurance policy terms etc. These are like sources of law in many ways, except that the addressees voluntarily subscribed to them, which is not usually the case for law. On the legislation side you find similar marginal cases, like centralized union labour contracts signed by the minister and the unions. These can be considered sources of law, or evidence, depending on the role in which they are used, and the perspective of the user.

Another common characterization, from the point of view of the producer, is that it is a written directive: it is a writing used by a competent legislator to communicate a norm to a certain group of addressees.

Documents that are to become valid law, documents that once were valid law, and point-in-time consolidations of sources of law that are modified during their lifetime are included. The inclusion of point-in-time consolidations does not merit any further explanation: it will be obvious to the reader that these are intended and used as sources of law.

The inclusion of past and future sources of law is necessary for a number of reasons. Since it is common to argue today about the legality of events that occurred in the past, it is also necessary today to know of previous (consolidated versions of) sources of law. In analogy, we also prepare for the future today, and therefore we want to know of the law of the future inasfar as possible. This is the main reason why new legislation is usually announced long before it becomes valid law, and why proposed legislation is often accessible to the public even before it becomes future law, which remains contingent on the completion of the legislative process. Proposed legislation is therefore also within the scope of the standard. There is after all no good way to distinguish real future law from presumed future law, since future law may be modified or retracted in the meantime.

Legislation often comes accompanied with other, explanatory and justifying materials (explanation and justification) supplied by the legislator itself that can be considered part of the source of law. These are also within scope of the standard. Annotations by third parties are in principle not part, although the standard will include provisions for attaching annotions and metadata to sources of law.

The proposed XML standard extends only to those aspects and features of a document that pertain to its role as a source of law. Since we have identified as its key role being a backing for an argument concerning the existence of a norm or definition in a certain legal system, the identification of the parts (articles, sentences, appendix, figure, etc.) that can be referred to in this role, as relatively independent semantic units, is within the scope of the standard.

The standard is not directly concerned with recording layout where it merely functions as a convention identifying the relevant parts of the document as outlined above, but it allows the association of external stylesheet rules (e.g., using XSLT and/or CSS) to obtain the same layout effects in presentation. In addition is allows the use of appropriate other XML languages for recording layout effects that are not currently considered meaningful for legal reference, recognizing that these may indeed be important for legal purposes.

Unambiguous and globally unique identification of the document as a whole is obviously also within scope, as is the distinction between different versions or (temporal) expressions of the same source of law at different points in time.

Identification of the nature of the source of law is also of importance, for instance to determine whether the events to which it is applied are within its jurisdiction and also whether it takes precedence or not if another source of law appears to be in conflict with it. To make such a determination, one usually makes use of existing classifications in a legal system (e.g. constitution, formal codified law, acts of parliament, Royal or Presidential decrees, ministerial regulations, etc.) which usually correspond to some legislative procedure, or one uses a combination of the formal legislator (Parliament, Government, Government and Parliament, the Crown, the Minister of Unimportant Affairs, etc.) and the specific legislative competence (or power) used. The distinction between different legislative competences can be important if a single legislator, for instance a minister, can issue different kinds of legislation (for instance the minister can pass a general ministerial regulation in his capacity as a minister, or an act modifying a law if the modified law specifically attributes the power to change parts of it to the Minister). This problem is also within scope of the standard. 

\section{Definitions}

In this document, the CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA), and dependent documents, a number of concepts will be used. This section informally defines the concepts we foresee at this point.

   
\begin{description}
  \item[Bibliographic entity:] A work, expression, manifestation, or item, as intended by the IFLA-FRBR\footnote{The \emph{Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records} (FRBR) is a conceptual framework used by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) that identifies and defines the entities of interest to users of bibliographic records.}, or any part of these.
	\item[Work:] A work or work of law is the abstract collector associated to the set of provisions that can be described and named as a single entity, that was originally created by its originator (e.g. a Parliament) in a single creative process. The concept of work was taken from the IFLA-FRBR.
   \item[Expression:] An expression, version, or variant is (one of) the realization(s) of a work in a specific collection of actual sentences and words and punctuation and (where appropriate) presentation choices. For instance, each consolidation of a formal act of law is an expression of that work. For instance, the English, Dutch, Italian, and German versions of a European directive are different expressions of the same work. The concept of expression was taken from the IFLA-FRBR.
   \item[Manifestation:] A manifestation is one of the physical or electronic embodiments of an expression of a work. Thus, a specific XML representation, a PDF file (as generated by printing into PDF a specific Word file with a specific PDF distiller), a printed booklet, all represent different manifestations of the same expression, version, or variant of a work. The concept of manifestation was taken from the IFLA-FRBR.
   \item[Item:] An item is one specific exemplar of a manifestation: a very specific copy of a book on a specific shelf in a library, a file stored on a computer in a specific location, etc. Items stored on a computer can be easily copied to another location, resulting in another item, but the same manifestation. The concept of item was taken from the IFLA-FRBR.
   \item[Source of law:] A source of law is a document that can be, is, was, or presumably will be used to back an argument concerning the existence of a norm or definition in a certain legal system, or, alternatively, a writing used by a competent legislator to communicate a norm to a certain group of addressees. Source of law is a familiar concept in law schools, and may be used to refer to both legislators (fonti delle leggi, sources des lois), legislation and case law (fonti del diritto, sources du droit), custom, etc. In this workshop it strictly refers to documents. A single source of law is an expression.
   \item[Addressee:] Someone to whom a source of law is addressed. The addressees can be described (e.g. a driver is somebody that drives) or determined by enumeration or choice (e.g. a taxpayer is someone who chooses to pay taxes here). The source of law can obviously also refer to agents that are not addressees (e.g. the victim of a murder).
   \item[Public body:] A body created by an act of law, or assumed to exist prior to constitutional law, that exists to serve one or more specific public interests.
   \item[Public Decision:] A written decision of a public body to perform a public act using a competence assigned by law.
  \item[Public Act:] An act that can only be performed using a public competence attributed by law to serve a specific public interest, for instance declaring marriage, imprisoning someone, etc.
  \item[Public Competence:] the power/right to perform certain public acts to serve a specific public interest.
  \item[Legislative Competence:] the power/right to legislate, i.e. to produce written decisions applying to the choices of a certain group, either intensionally or extensionally defined, of addressees. The legislative competence is usually restricted.
  \item[Legislator:] A public body with legislative competence.
  \item[Assignment (of Competence):] A public act that assigns the competence to perform a public act to a public body.
  \item[Delegation (of Competence):] A public act of a public body that transfers a competence assigned to it to another public body.
  \item[Subdelegation (of Competence):] A public act of a public body that transfers a competence delegated to it to another public body.
  \item[Mandate (of Competence):] A decision of a public body to allow another person or body to use its public competence to perform certain public legal acts, without transfering the competence. 
\end{description}

\section{Objectives}

\textbf{The first objective} is a grammar, specified in the form of a DTD and an XML Schema, that describes structurally and semantically the content of individual or multiple expressions of resources that are within the scope of this standard. This grammar uses XML as the underlying syntax, and generates standard XML manifestations of the expression being described.

The XML syntax includes elements and attributes that are explicitly declared as either required, optional or proprietary. Required elements and attributes are necessary for a document to be considered correct according to the standard. Optional elements and attributes form a rich and complex set of information items that can be used when necessary. Proprietary elements and attributes are not part of the standard, but provisions for location and syntax to express them are a fundamental part of the standard. It is an error to use a proprietary element and attributes for expressing meaning for which an appropriate required or optional element or attribute also exists.

Please note that the XML syntax regards expressions of works, and not the works themselves, and furthermore generates standard manifestations of that expression. Ideally, all correct manifestations of the same expression are identical (i.e., the standard is sufficiently precise to describe unambiguously how to mark up a document). In practice this will not be possible, but it is a goal of this group to reduce as much as possible the sources of ambiguity in describing this grammar.

\textbf{The second objective} is a metadata convention that associates metadata information to resources that are within the scope of this standard. Metadata can be attached to independent bibliographic entities, and to their parts. Each metadata element refers to either the work, or the expression, or the manifestation or the item, to the exclusion of all others. For instance, the date of enactment of a work will most probably be the same as the date of enactment of the expression corresponding to its first and original version, yet their values should be kept distinct and separate.

All metadata collections, including (optionally) official and authoritative ones, can be explicitly versioned, authored, and dated, and optionally digitally signed (using an appropriate external standard).

Metadata elements are expressed in an ontology in which classes and properties are explicitly declared as either required, optional or proprietary. Required elements are necessary for a document to be considered correct according to the standard. Optional elements form a rich and complex set of information items that can be used when necessary. Proprietary elements are not part of the standard, but provisions for location and syntax to express them are a fundamental part of the standard. It is an error to use a proprietary element for expressing meaning for which an appropriate required or optional element also exists.

Required metadata elements are embedded in the standard XML manifestation of the bibliographic entity. Optional and proprietary metadata elements are either embedded in the standard XML manifestation of the bibliographic entity, or expressed in the form of \emph{OWL statements} about the bibliographic entity. Metadata elements embedded in the standard XML manifestation of the bibliographic entity can be transformed into OWL statements by way of a standard translation defined by an XSL stylesheet.

\textbf{The third objective} is a naming convention, that correctly and clearly identifies all possible resources that are in scope in this standard, and their parts in as far as these are referenced as independent bibliographic entities. The naming convention is based on the URI standard, and clearly distinguishes between works, expressions, manifestations, and items.

An optional extension to the naming convention will be specified that, given the URI of a work, allows automatic derivation of the URIs of known expressions (i.e., by attaching additional, predictable elements to the original URI). Given the URI of a work, and knowledge of its parts, the URI of parts is also optionally automatically derivable by the same method. Optionally, the URIs for a pre-defined set of possible manifestations (e.g. the official and authoritative conversions into XML, PDF, or paper) are also automatically derivable. Optionally, the URIs of one or more items of each manifestation are URLs that are obtainable through the aid of an official resolution service given the URI of a manifestation. The standard XML manifestation of an expression contains information about the optional naming functionality that can be expected.

The URIs of manifestations, expressions and works are stable and permanent, and use either URNs or permanent URIs as their underlying syntax. No such requirement is expressed for the URIs or URLs of individual items. 

\section{Deliverables and Schedule}

Draft versions of deliverables are available in the subversion repository \footnote{See http://darius.lri.jur.uva.nl/svn/MetaLexWS/} throughout the project. The final version will be made available on the website\footnote{See http://www.metalex.eu/information/cen-workshop/} three weeks before the final meeting of the project, in december.

\section{Design Principles}

For Patterns in Content Models we use some of the patterns described in "Design patterns for document substructures", just like Akoma Ntoso. This means that all content models and complex types used in the schema follow precisely the form of the relevant pattern, and all elements can be simply described and treated according to their pattern rather than individually. These patterns are:

\begin{enumerate}
	\item  Markers: markers are content-less elements that are scattered here and there in the document and are meaningful for their names as well as their attributes. Markers are also known in literature as empty elements or milestones. All metadata elements are markers so that metadata values are not part of the text content of a document, but rather are attribute values.
\item Inlines: an inline element is an element placed within a mixed model element that identifies some text fragment as relevant for some reason. There are both semantically relevant inlines and presentation oriented inlines. There is but one content model using inlines (and markers), which means that all mixed model elements (i.e., those that allow both text and elements) also allow a repeatable selection of all inline elements.
\item Blocks: a block is a container of text or structures that is organized vertically on the display (i.e., has paragraph breaks) and can contain either substructures or text.
\item Containers: containers are sequences of specific elements, some of which can be optional.
\item Hierarchy: a hierarchy is a set of arbitrarily deep nested sections with title and numbering. Each level of the nesting can contain either more nested sections or blocks. No text is allowed directly inside the hierarchy, but only within the appropriate block element (or, of course, titles and numbering). 
\end{enumerate}

The \emph{IFLA-FRBR} distinguishes the \textbf{content} and \textbf{form} aspects of the bibliographic entity. The workshop aims to use the distinctions made by the IFLA-FRBR. The proposed standard is primarily concerned with identification of legal bibliographic entities on the basis of content, and prescribes a single standardized form (i.e. a standard manifestation) of the entity in XML. In addition there is the aspect of \textbf{role}, that relates the bibliographic entity to specific contexts of use. While content and form are objective properties of the bibliographic entity, in the sense that people trained in the use of the bibliographic entity will generally independently come to the same conclusions about form and content, this is not true of role. The same act of parliament may for instance, depending on context of use, be considered part of fiscal or social security law. It may also, depending on what role the agent adopts towards the entity, considered a benefit or a burden, etc.

While an XML Schema will be used to marry form to content, and the URI for identification of content, RDF/OWL will be used for adding information related to role: \textbf{metadata} in the narrow sense of the word. The difference between both technical solutions (XML Schema vs. RDF/OWL) is that the second solution allows the possibility of physically separating the information about the bibliographic entity from any specific manifestation of it. Different annotators can therefore add (possibly contradictory) metadata to the entity without physical access to the standard manifestation of the bibliographic entity. By allowing organizations to annotate entities without physical modification to the entity, the use of (possibly signed) standard manifestations published by the original author is encouraged.

\section{Recommended Reading}

This sections lists some relevant inputs into the workshop. Most are available online.

The most relevant forum on technical and user requirements issues are the Workshops on Legislative XML. In particular the Proceedings of the 3rd Legislative XML Workshop\footnote{In I Quaderni, nr 18 at http://www.cnipa.gov.it/site/it-IT/La\_Documentazione\\/Pubblicazioni/Quaderni/} and the Presentations of the 4th Legislative XML Workshop \footnote{http://www.verwaltungsakademie.ktn.gv.at/akl/kvak.nsf/\\faedc52e6066e099412566f60035f1d2/2e017773e6bf87e6c12570f2002fe65f} give a good overview of issues and XML standards in Europe, and applications using XML. \cite{Boer:03d,Boer:02a} discuss the existing \metalex{} XML schema. \cite{Boer:03e} discusses some practical problems associated with jurisdiction and language, in the context of \metalex{} XML. 
The website of Akoma Ntoso\footnote{http://www.akomantoso.org/}, an XML standard used in Africa, gives a good introduction into this standard.

On time and consolidated versions, the works of Monica Palmirani, in the context of Norme in Rete, represent the scientific state of the art (e.g. \cite{palmirani}). \cite{Boer:2005e} is a position statement explaining why different consolidations in time of legislation are fundamentally different from versions of bibliographic works in a normal bibliographic context.

Caterina Lupo\footnote{http://www.nir.it/stdoc/documentazione/nairobi.pdf} addresses the issue of legislators working together to publish legislation using the same methods. \cite{Boer:04a} addresses the difference between standardization of sources of law at the level of the legislator and at the level of the user organization that uses software manipulating XML documents published by different legislators (or publishers), and makes a case for annotation of sources of law in RDF/OWL without physical changes to the XML document. \cite{Boer:2005b} explains the problems and opportunities associated with the application of \metalex{} XML to spatial planning and local regulations.
\cite{Boer:02b} addresses amongst others the use of legislative competence and delegation of that competence as a model to organize sources of law by
(type of) legislator, which is also an issue that is not on the mind of the legislator but very relevant to organizations that use legislation.

\cite{biagioli} is a good example (but this is by no means a new scientific question) of trying to build a knowledge representation with operational semantics of the content of the document by direct markup of its content. The relevant question here is the one of isomorphism between executable specification and the text of the original source of law. For purposes of justification, explanation, and maintenance, isomorphism is considered desirable for executable specifications used by large public bodies like tax administrations, etc., although this does not necessarily mean that there is a need for adding it to an XML standard for encoding sources of law.



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