=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1442/paper_8
|storemode=property
|title=A Systematic Mapping of the Literature on Legal Core Ontologies
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1442/paper_8.pdf
|volume=Vol-1442
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ontobras/GriffoAG15
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==A Systematic Mapping of the Literature on Legal Core Ontologies==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1442/paper_8.pdf
A Systematic Mapping of the Literature on
Legal Core Ontologies1
Cristine Griffo, João Paulo A. Almeida, Giancarlo Guizzardi
Ontology & Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO),
Computer Science Department, Federal University of Espírito Santo,
Vitória, ES, Brazil
cristine.griffo@aluno.ufes.br, {jpalmeida, gguizzardi}@inf.ufes.br
Abstract. Over the last decades, the field of legal ontologies has seen a sharp
increase in the number of published papers. The literature on legal ontologies
now covers a wide variety of topics and research approaches. One of these
topics is legal core ontologies, which have received significant attention since
the 1990s. In order to provide an up-to-date overview of this research area,
this article presents a systematic mapping study of published researches on
legal core ontologies. The selected papers were analyzed and categorized
according to the perspective of their main contribution as well as according to
the legal theories used. The study reveals that only a small number of studies
use legal theories suitable to address current societal challenges.
1. Introduction
The importance of understanding the universe of norms has to do with the broad
spectrum of roles that norms play in society. As stated in [Bobbio 2001], individuals,
from birth to death, live in a world of norms, which direct their actions. It is thus not
surprising that many computer applications are concerned with or manipulate
information related to norms, in particular legal norms.
Research in Computer and Law has its roots in the 1960s. In 1957, Mehl [apud
Bing 2007] wrote about automated legal decisions and initiated a new research trend.
Since then, the transdisciplinary area of Computer and Law has matured, with different
research niches investigating the various aspects of the field. One of the niches that has
received special attention in recent decades is that of Legal Ontologies. Legal
Ontologies is a generic term for ontologies developed to address the legal domain and
relates to representation of legal concepts, legal knowledge, and common sense, among
others. In contrast, legal core ontologies (LCO) are legal ontologies that represent, in
the domain of law, domain-independent concepts, properties and relations as well.
Applying Guarino’s classification of ontologies [Guarino 1998] to the legal domain we
can establish the following categories of legal ontologies beyond legal core ontologies:
legal domain ontologies, legal task ontologies, and legal application ontologies.
In the early years of research in Computer and Law, researchers did not
emphasize the difference between kinds of legal ontologies in their works. The term
legal core ontology was used in 1996 by [Valente and Breuker 1996] when they
1
This research is funded by the Brazilian Research Funding Agencies CNPq (grants 311313/2014-0 and
485368/2013-7) and CAPES/CNPq (402991/2012-5). Cristine Griffo is funded by CAPES.
proposed to relate the term core ontology used in Van Heijst’thesis (apud [Valente and
Breuker 1996]) in legal ontology research.
Our investigation of existing “legal core ontologies” is motivated by our recent
efforts into the construction of a new layer of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)
[Guizzardi 2005] in order to represent the legal domain. We started the research based
on two pillars to build a consistent legal ontology, as we have defended in [Griffo et al.
2015]: the use of legal theories2 and foundational ontologies.
Initially, a non-systematic search showed a significant number of papers
modeling fundamental legal concepts, such as claim, duty, obligation and permission,
based on Hohfeld’s classification [Hohfeld 1913], [Hohfeld 1917], one of the most
important legal theories in the juridical literature. In addition, this preliminary search
showed that a noticeable number of papers proposing LCOs had chosen a positivist
legal theory as a basis for the ontology, despite the limitations of this particular theory
to deal with current legal cases. Finally, it was possible to observe that few legal core
ontologies were grounded in a foundational ontology. With this scenario, it was
necessary to delimit a study scope and a systematic research method to understand
better this field. The scope was limited to legal core ontologies and the chosen method
was systematic mapping. The genre legal ontologies as a whole is not included in the
scope, since our focus is to delimit existing work that could in the future inform the
design of a unified legal core ontology.
A systematic mapping is an extensive review of primary studies in a specific
subject area that aims to identify the available body of work in the literature in order to
answer relevant issues [Kitchenham and Charters 2007]. Two points are identified by
mapping a specific field of research: 1) difficulties and limitations found by other
researchers; and 2) present and future research niches identified by the researchers.
This paper presents the result of systematic mapping of primary studies on legal
core ontologies, which aimed to:
- Select published studies on legal core ontologies, which mentioned or used
either Hohfeld’s classification of legal concepts or expressions such as
“legal theory” or “legal concepts”;
- Classify the selected studies concerning the category of their main
contribution: (1) language; (2) tool; (3) method; and (4) model;
- Identify legal theories used in the building of legal core ontologies;
- Identify foundational ontologies used in the building of legal core
ontologies;
- Analyze all selected researches in order to point out important research
niches into the area of the legal core ontologies.
This paper is outlined as follows: Section 2 presents how the systematic
mapping process was developed. In this section, we advance a list of relevant papers as
well as the result of their analysis. Section 3 presents final considerations, pointing out
the main conclusions of this study, including a discussion on possible bias and
limitations.
2
A legal theory is a body of systematically arranged fundamental principles in order to describe, under a
perspective, what exists in the domain of enquiry of the Law.
2. The Systematic Mapping Process
In the study reported in this paper, we carried out the systematic mapping process
described in [Petersen et al. 2008] and [Kitchenham and Charters 2007], which is
illustrated in figure 1. In the first phase of the process, the sources of bibliographical
material and both criteria of inclusion and exclusion were defined. Each phase produced
an outcome that was used as input for the next phase. As pointed out by [Kitchenham
and Charters 2007] and [Petersen et al. 2008], the purpose of a systematic mapping is to
provide an overview of a research area in a wide and horizontal way and identify the
quantity and type of research and results available within it.
PLANNING CONDUCT SCREENING OF KEYWORDING DATA
Outcome SEARCH STUDIES Outcome EXTRACTION
Reviewed scope Outcome Outcome Classification Outcome
All studies Relevant studies scheme Systematic Map
Figure 1. The Systematic Mapping Process. Source: [Petersen et al. 2008] (adapted)
2.1 Planning
In this first phase, both universe and sample of the systematic mapping was delimited.
We have chosen legal ontologies as the universe of our study and legal core ontologies
as the sample of this study. The following questions guided this mapping as well the
following inclusion and exclusion criteria.
RQ1: What researches exist in the area of legal core ontologies? Which research
niches have been investigated (e.g. language, method, tool, and model)?
RQ2: Which legal theories were used in the selected studies?
RQ3: Which foundational ontologies or core ontologies were used on selected
legal ontologies?
Inclusion criteria (IC): Papers and chapters of books on legal core ontologies
published from 1995 to 2014:
IC1: studies in Computer Science and concerned exclusively with “Computer
and Law”;
IC2: studies that referred to generic legal concepts such as “legal theory” or
“legal concepts” (e.g. Hohfeld’s classification, legal relation, legal fact).
Exclusion criteria. Exclusion criteria were:
EC1: studies merely available in abstracts, slide presentations, technical reports
or similar;
EC2: duplicity in studies (including versions of the same study, different
sources);
EC3: studies that were not available in English;
EC4: studies about “legal ontologies” only concerned with Law or Philosophy.
Our research source was Google Scholar, which includes papers from different
conferences and journals, such as AAAI, ICAIL, JURIX, JURISIN, DEON, RELAW,
FOIS, ACM, IEEE, and RuleML, JISCI, Int. Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
2.2 Conduct Search
After the planning phase, the second phase started with the delimitation of the search
strings as well as its corresponding control group. Firstly, the search string was applied
on the sources and the result was compared with the control group in order to minimize
a possible bias. The search string was modified to converge with the control group and
to include a wider number of studies as well. The outcome of this phase was a total of
269 studies. The selected papers are cited in the text as well as referred to in Section 5.
Search String = (“legal core ontology” OR “legal core ontologies” OR “legal top-level
ontology” OR “generic ontology for legal concepts” OR “core legal ontology” OR “core legal
ontologies” OR “legal upper-level ontology” OR “core ontology for law” OR “core ontology
of legal concepts” OR “ontology of legal norms” OR core ontology” OR “generic ontology”
OR “principled ontology”) AND ((Hohfeld OR hohfeldian) OR “legal theory” OR “legal
concepts”)
2.3 Screening of the Studies
In this phase, the outcome of phase 2 was refined by considering both inclusion and
exclusion criteria. In this phase, we have excluded duplicated studies (found in different
sources), technical reports, studies for which a paper with a more recent version had
already been included, as well as studies not available in English, or not concerned with
ontology in Computer Science. The result of this phase produced a list of 128 selected
studies.
2.4 Classification Scheme
Firstly, the outcome of phase 3 was organized by year of publication in order to provide
an overview of the LCO area from the chronological point of view (figure 2). Despite
that, some papers on legal ontologies have been published since the 1990’s; the term
legal core ontology became more widespread only after the beginning of 2000, peaking
in the period of 2005-2009, which sustained attention in the period of 2010-2014.
60
40
20
0
1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009 2010-2014
Figure 2. Studies published from 1995 to 2014
A second dimension related to the contribution perspective guided the
classification of the selected studies in order to identify the major research niches in the
area of LCO as well as to identify and analyze three points: 1) the use of legal theories
as a theoretical base, 2) the use of foundational ontologies as a base for developing a
LCO, and 3) the LCOs encountered in the mapping. For this, we analyzed abstracts,
keywords, introduction sections, and references in the selected studies.
2.5 Data Extraction
In this phase, we extracted data from selected papers in order to make a comparative
analysis. This analysis consisted of three parts: a) classification and analysis of papers
according to their contribution, b) analysis of use of legal theories, and c) analysis of
use of foundational ontologies.
Contribution Area. The studies were classified according to their contribution
area as shown in figure 3. For this classification, we excluded studies that were either
review or opinion papers. The result of this analysis produced a list of 116 studies
distributed according to four different contribution areas (see figure 3).
80
60
40
20
0
Language Method Tool Model
Figure 3. Distribution of researches by contribution perspective
Three among the analyzed papers proposed languages in legal ontologies.
[Athan et al. 2013] presented the LegalRuleML language in the context of the OASIS
project and exemplified it with cases of Italian courts. In addition, the Open Digital
Rights Language (ODRL), an open standard for expressing machine-readable licenses
for digital objects, has been used with ontologies in studies as [García et al. 2005]. Since
the scope of this mapping study has temporal and subject boundaries, some studies did
not appear. However, it is relevant to point out the following articles, which are related
with legal discourse [McCarty 1989], legal relations [Allen and Saxon 1998], legal
knowledge [Hamfelt 1995], [Barklund and Hamfelt 1994], and legal argumentation
[Gordon 1994].
Regarding the contribution area of methods, the following works have been
identified: [Capuano et al. 2014], [Dhouib and Gargouri 2014], [Ceci 2012], [Ceci and
Gangemi 2012], [Lenci et al. 2012], [Nguyen and Kaneiwa 2014], [Tiscornia 2010],
[Despres and Szulman 2007], [Trojahn et al. 2008], DILIGENT [Casanovas et al. 2005]
[Casanovas et al. 2007], TERMINAE [Despres and Szulman 2006] used in [Saravanan
et al. 2009] and [Dhouib and Gargouri 2014], Semantic Peer-to-Peer Approach used in
EGO ontology [Ortiz-Rodríguez et al. 2006], and Schweighofer’s research about legal
IR and indexing [Schweighofer 2010].
In the tools category, we have included applications, systems, databases, and
frameworks related with ontologies. Examples in this line of research include: [Hussami
2009], [Drumond and Girardi 2008], [Schweighofer and Liebwald 2007], [Gil et al.
2005], [Moor and Weigand 1999], [Ceci and Ceci 2013], [Lamparter et al. 2005],
[Boonchom, V. S., & Soonthornphisaj 2012], [Ceci and Gordon 2012], the FrameNet
repository [Venturi et al. 2009], [Venturi et al. 2012], [Breuker et al. 2000], [Wolff et al.
2005], [Kiškis and Petrauskas 2004]. In addition, eGovernance solutions in [Edelmann
et al. 2012]; [Tiscornia and Sagri 2012], [Palmirani et al. 2012], [Casellas 2012];
ontology-based application for music digital licenses in [Baumann and Rosnay 2004],
[Poblet 2011], [Engers et al. 2008], [Ryan et al. 2003], [Curtoni et al. 1999], [Biasiotti
2011], [Gangemi et al. 2003],[Markovic et al. 2014], DIRECT [Breuker and Hoekstra
2004a], IURISERVICE [Casellas et al. 2007], the LME Project [Bartalesi Lenzi et al.
2009], the LOIS Project [Peters et al. 2006], and a Vietnamese legal application [Thinh
et al. 2014].
As shown in figure 3, most of the papers identified in our study, propose
particular models (i.e., particular ontologies). We identified some projects within which
ontologies have been developed, such as: DALOS [Agnoloni and Tiscornia 2010], LME
[Bartalesi Lenzi et al. 2009], ESTRELLA3, JUR-IWN or Jur-Wordnet [Casanovas and
Poblet and et al. 2005], LOIS [Curtoni et al. 1999], [Tiscornia 2000], [Peters et al.
2006], among others cited. The following legal domain ontologies were build in a
project: Medical Law Ontology [Despres and Delforge 2000], Dutch Tax ontology in
the E-POWER Project [Boer and Van Engers 2003], International Copyright Law
Ontology [Ikeda 2007], Copyright Ontology [García et al. 2007], Mediation Core
Ontology (MCO) [Poblet et al. 2009], LAO ontology [Lu et al. 2012], ALLOT ontology
[Barabucci et al. 2012], [Despres and Szulman 2004], Ukraine legal ontology [Getman
and Karasiuk 2014].
Legal core ontologies. Among legal ontologies found, were found the following
legal core ontologies: FOLaw ontology [Valente and Breuker 1994a], [Valente and
Breuker 1996], [Valente and Breuker 1994b], Kralingen’s ontology [Kralingen 1997],
CLO ontology [Gangemi 2007], NM-L+ NM-core ontology [Shaheed, Jaspreet,
Alexander Yip 2005], LRI-Core [Breuker and Hoekstra 2004b], Legal-RDF Ontology
[McClure 2007], PROTON+OPJK, OPLK [Caralt 2008], Ontological Model of Legal
Acts [Gostojic and Milosavljevic 2013], LKIF-core ontology [Hoekstra et al. 2007],
[Hoekstra et al. 2009], LegalRuleML-core ontology [Athan et al. 2013] and LOTED
core ontology [Distinto et al. 2014].
Use of legal theories. Regarding the legal theories referred to selected studies,
we focused on identifying the legal theories that were referred to as primary sources for
the selected works. Among the legal theories, the most cited are: (i) Legal Positivism
(appearing in “Pure Theory of Law” [Kelsen 2005], “Some Fundamental Legal
Conceptions” [Hohfeld 1913]); (ii) Inclusive Positivism (appearing in “The Concept of
Law” [Hart. 1994] and “Norms, Institutions and institutional facts” [MacCormick
1998]);); (iii) Legal Realism (appearing in “Normative System” [Alchourrón, C. E. and
Bulygin 1971], “On norms of competence” [Bulygin 1992]); (iv) Legal Interpretivism
(appearing in “Taking Rights Seriously” [Dworkin 1978]); (v) Legal Argumentation
(appearing in “A Theory of Legal Argumentation” [Alexy 2001], “A Theory of
Constitutional Rights [Alexy 2010]”, “The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation
[Perelman, C., Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969]”).
Legal Interpretivism
Legal Argumentation
Legal Realism
Inclusive Positivism
Legal Positivism
0 10 20 30 40
Figure. 4. Main legal doctrines referred in the selected studies
3
http://www.estrellaproject.org/
The most frequently cited legal doctrines are shown in figure 4. Despite the
existence of new legal theories to solve hard cases, Legal Positivism is the most
frequently used legal theory for legal ontologies. In addition, despite the importance of
legal theory to legal core ontologies, solely 35 (approx. 27%) of the 128 selected works
used primary sources of legal theories; 44 studies (approx. 34%) used indirect sources
(e.g. use a LCO based on a legal theory to build a domain ontology); and 49 studies
(approx. 38%) did not use any primary source.
Use of foundational ontologies. We emphasize the importance of grounding
legal ontologies in foundational ontologies in order to obtain ontological quality, as
strongly defended by researchers, such as [Guizzardi 2005] and [Uschold and Gruninger
1996]. We identified 47 studies that propose a kind of ontology. Among these
ontologies, 32% do not ground the proposed ontology on a foundational/core ontology.
The most applied foundational/core ontologies are LKIF, LKIF-core, LRI-CORE,
SUMO, DOLCE, CLO, FOLAW and OPJK. Most of the ontologies were specified
using OWL, regardless of the various expressiveness limitations (such as those
discussed in [Mossakowski et al. 2012]).
3. Final considerations
This paper presents the results of a systematic mapping study investigating published
works on the topic of legal core ontologies. The systematic mapping revealed that the
niche with more extensive literature was the niche of models. Some studies used the
generic term “legal ontology”, giving the idea of a generic or core ontology. An
analysis in these studies showed that most of the proposed ontologies were actually
domain ontologies addressing specific fragments of the Law. In fact, there are few
existing LCO, suggesting a research niche to be explored as future work.
This mapping had the purpose of finding existing proposals of LCO in the
literature. This purpose was reflected in the search strings that we have employed. For
this reason, naturally, most of the studies analyzed were cases of studies in which
models (ontologies) were proposed. For a more comprehensive research about
language, tools or methods in LCO, a change in the search string would be required
(with the inclusion of these keywords). For example, visual languages for Law (e.g.
Nomos [Ingolfo et al. 2013], [Ingolfo et al. 2014]) suggests an interesting future
research topic. Other lines of research that received less attention are tools and,
specifically, applications. Finally, the line of research related to methodologies in LCO
could be explored not only with new proposals of methodologies, but also with
evaluation research, qualifying the existing methodologies.
Regarding the issue of legal theories, we select two closely related issues to
discuss here. The first point concerns Hohfeld’s classification of legal concepts and its
meaningful use in the studies of the sample. Exactly 16 studies refer directly to
Hohfeld’s classification [Hohfeld 1913], [Hohfeld 1917] and many other studies refer to
it indirectly. In fact, Hohfeld’s classification of legal concepts is one the most important
work about classification in Law, and many others theories or classifications are built
with Hohfeld’s work as a basis. Despite its unquestionable influence in the study of Law
per se, the popularity of Hohfeld’s classification in LCO can also be attributed to its
logic-based nature. In the early 20th century, the use of Logic in Law reflected a desire
to bring a touch of authority to the discipline. This search for objectivity/scientificity
also contributed to the broad acceptance of Legal Positivism and its doctrine lines at the
time. In this context, considering a logic-based approach to the Law as a basis for an
LCO, in particular, and computational approaches to the Law, in general, seems like a
natural choice. The problem with using theories based on Legal Positivism (e.g.
Hohfeld, Hart, Kelsen theories) is that they do not include modern concepts of the Law
introduced by the explicit countenance of a social reality. This problem is propagated to
all LCO and computational approaches built following these theories.
The second point is about the (not so) modern theories of Legal Argumentation
and Principles (e.g. Alexy, Perelman, Ryle-Toulmin, Fisher&Patton theories). In
conducting this study, we have observed in recent years an interesting change in Legal-
theoretical scenario. The traditional scenario is one in which the so-called “Purity of the
Law” is sought after, i.e., a scenario in which the analysis of the Law is considered in
isolation from the influences of other disciplines such as Economics, Sociology,
Anthropology and Politics. We have observed a tendency towards a scenario in which
the importance of these related disciplines is acknowledged and openly discussed.
We would like to acknowledge explicitly the following bias in our study. In light
of the fact that our study was designed to investigate existing proposals in “legal core
ontologies”, in our search strings, we did not use the terms “legal ontologies” or “legal
ontology” (which were too broad for the scope of this paper). Nevertheless, we are
aware that some studies about LCO did use the term “legal ontologies” or “legal
ontology” rather than “legal core ontology” or “legal core ontologies”. In addition,
other studies did not use any expressions such as “legal theory”, “legal concepts”, but
rather synonyms (e.g. “concept of law”). Examples include: [Gordon 1994], [Visser and
Bench-capon 1998], [Visser and Bench-Capon 1996], [Hage and Verheij 1999],
[Trojahn et al. [S.d.]], [Allen and Saxon 1998] and [Wyner and Hoekstra 2012].
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