=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1301/ontocomodise2014_8
|storemode=property
|title=A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1301/ontocomodise2014_8.pdf
|volume=Vol-1301
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/fois/MachadoO14
}}
==A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1301/ontocomodise2014_8.pdf
A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law
System
Alexandre Lopes Machado and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
Divisão de Ciência da Computação (IEC)
Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA)
São José dos Campos, Brazil
{alexm,parente}@ita.br
http://www.comp.ita.br/alexm
Abstract. The civil law system is highly characterized by relationships.
The general rule is that any document of this domain is always embed-
ded in a context of the legal order. The legal order can be defined as
a set of norms; thus, understanding concepts of a legal norm is impor-
tant to understanding other legal norms. However, this feature impairs
knowledge of the law, since a thorough understanding of a norm requires
a specific knowledge for understanding the dependence between legal
norms. Considering the difficulty in undeciphering this knowledge, this
paper highlights the importance of modeling relationships between legal
norms in a civil law system. In the present paper, we propose an ontology
aiming to capture a clear, concise and unambiguous view of this domain,
as well as systematize and reveal the dependence between legal norms
with an emphasis on relationships existing in civil law. With such an
ontology, we expect to provide a shared understanding of the concepts
and relationships, enabling interoperability. Due to the complexity of the
domain, we developed a reference ontology written in OntoUML. In the
paper, we underline the major aspects of our ontology and emphasize its
potential application as a semantic reference for various civil law systems
in the world.
Keywords: Conceptual modeling, Legal ontologies, OntoUML
1 Introduction
The contemporary legal systems of the world are generally based on one of three
basic systems: civil law, common law, and religious law or combinations of these.
Civil law is the most widespread system of law around the world.
A central quest in the civil law system is the understanding of relations
between norms. The civil law system is highly characterized by relationships.
The general rule is that any document of this domain is always embedded in
a context of the legal order. The legal order can be defined as a set of norms.
Thus, understanding concepts of a legal norm is important to understanding
other legal norms.
2 Alexandre Lopes Machado and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
However, this feature impairs knowledge of the law, since a thorough un-
derstanding of a norm requires a set of skills for understanding the dependence
between legal norms.
On the other hand, legal norm documents are semistructured and hierarchi-
cally structured in nature. This includes the systematic organization of a legal
document. In this context, the structure consists of normative parts rather than
simply documents. So taking into account the structure of legal knowledge could
facilitate the understanding of legal concepts, enabling interoperability [13] [8].
According to [6] we will experience an increasing demand for building ref-
erence ontologies in subject domains in reality, as well as employing them to
address classes of problems, for which sophisticated ontological distinctions [3]
are required. According to [2], Legal domain is one of these classes of problems.
In this paper we present a legal ontology of relationships for a civil law
system written in OntoUML in order to improve access to normative elements
and components rather than simply documents. The position advocated in this
work is that allowing free access to law is required for the understanding of the
law. Thus, it is possible to pose queries on normative acts.
The paper is organized as follows: In Sections 2 and 3 we present the back-
ground underlying our proposed ontology. In Section 4 we present the related
works. In Section 5 we describe our legal ontology with its concepts in which we
outline its importance. In Section 6 we present an illustration of our ontology
by a running example. Finally, in Section 7 we conclude the paper and provide
an outlook for the continuation of this research.
2 Ontological Unified Modeling Language (OntoUML)
Ontological Unified Modeling Language (OntoUML) is a conceptual modeling
language whose metamodel has been designed to comply with the ontological
distinctions and axiomatic theories put forth by a theoretically well-grounded
Foundational Ontology called Unified Foundation Ontology (UFO) [4][5].
Due to space limitations, we concentrate here on a fragment of the OntoUML,
with a specific focus on distinctions spawned by variations in meta-properties of
a modal nature. The main UFO categories are depicted in Figure 1. We restricted
ourselves to OntoUML elements enumerated from 1 to 9 (see aforementioned [4]
for details), namely, those categories of Object Types that extend the ontological
notion of Substance Universal, Moment and Relation. According to [4], this
fragment comprises the ontological notions that are believed to be most recurrent
in the practice of conceptual modeling for information systems. Since OntoUML
is a modeling language whose metamodel is designed to be isomorphic to the
UFO ontology, the leaf ontological distinctions in Figure 1 appear as modeling
primitives in the language.
The UFO meta-proprieties are [4]: Identity (I+), Rigid (R+), Anti-Rigid
(R-), Semi-Rigid (R˜). The object types are divided in two classes: Sortal and
Non-Sortal . We can only make identity and identification statements with the
support of a Sortal, i.e., the identity of an individual can only be traced in
A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System 3
Fig. 1. Excerpt of UFO taxonomy [4]. The blue lines delimits elements used in this
work.
connection with a Sortal type, which provides a principle of individuation and
identity for the particulars it collects. Since Non-Sortals cannot supply a principle
of identity for its instances, we assume that, all Non-Sortal Types in the model
must be represented as abstract classes.
The type in the root of a chain of specializations among rigid types is termed
a Kind (1) (e.g., Person) and the remaining rigid types in this chain are named
Subkinds (2) (e.g., Man, Woman). The type Kind being the unique top-most
rigid sortal instantiated by an individual and define a stable backbone. These
two subcategories are called rigid Universal types [4].
Related to anti-rigid Universal types, there are two sub categories: Phases
(3) and Roles (4). In both cases, we have cases of dynamic classification, i.e.,
the instances can move in and out of the extension of these types without any
effect on their identity. However, while in the case of Phase these changes occur
due to a change in the intrinsic properties of these instances; in the cases of Role,
they occur due to a change in their relational properties [4].
Relations are entities that glue together other entities. In OntoUML, two
broad categories of relations are typically considered, namely, material and for-
mal relations [7]. Formal relations (5) hold between two or more entities
directly, without any further intervening individual. Examples include relations
such as meronymic (9), subset-of, instantiation, among others not discussed here.
Material relations (6), conversely, have material structure on their own and
include examples such as kisses, conversations, fights and commitments. The
relata of a material relation are mediated by relators (7). For example, an
individual purchase is a relator that connects a customer and a supplier, and a
treatment is a relator which connects a patient with a medical unit. The relation
that connects this elements is called mediation (8). Mediation is a specific type
of existential dependency relation.
4 Alexandre Lopes Machado and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
3 Civil law
There are hundreds of legal systems in the world. At the global level, interna-
tional law is of great importance, whether created by the practice of sovereign
states or by agreement among them in the form of treaties and other agreements.
Some transnational entities such as the European Union have created their own
legal structures.
Although each system has its own individuality, it is possible to group many
of them into legal “families”. Generally based on one of three basic systems: civil
law, common law, and religious law or combinations of these.
Civil law is the most widespread system of law around the world. The central
source of law that is recognized as authoritative are codifications in a constitution
or statute passed by a legislature, to amend a code. It is also sometimes known
as Continental European law.
In contrast to the Common Law system, civil law is characterized by the
predominance of normative acts. The jurist and legal philosopher Hans Kelsen
created a theory based on a civil law system called the Pure Theory of Law [10]
and the concept known as “the grand norm” and Kelsen’s pyramid [11]. He used
this term to denote the basic norm, order, or rule that forms the underlying basis
for a legal system. This is a theoretical concept based on a need to determine a
point of origin on which the system can be legitimized. The constitution has, as
a form, a complex of norms, such as content, human conduct, motivated social
relations, and close to the achievement of the values; that point to the existing
power that emanates from the people, cannot be understood and interpreted, not
having in mind that structure, considered sense of connection, how is everything
that which integrates a set of values. The constitutional norm is higher than
the common law because the common law (or infra-constitutional norms, i.e.,
are down and out of those that are below the constitution) and are valid derive
from the constitution. The preeminence of the constitution of a country stems
from the fact that it is the product of the original constituent power, while
ordinary laws are the produce of an institutional power. Thus, the constitution
is considered sovereign.
Conceptually, its structure is represented by a pyramid with the top-most
part being the basic norm and all other norms derived from this in an ordered
and logical structure descending to the base of the pyramid. It is understood that
law must also have a normative basis, or a remission. Logically, there must be a
basic norm on which law rests. Any norm not within this structure is seen as an
illegitimate norm to the structure. There has to be such a norm or justification
would never reach an end. This yields a more subtle and defensible version of
positive law and the basic norm the logical constitution. It is the basic evaluative
premise from which the legitimacy or validity of all the laws derive. Laws can
be created, but the basic norm specifies how they can be created and changed.
Only those created in accordance with the basic norm will be valid laws. In other
words, it is the prescriptive premise from which the obligation of law follows.
Without this basic norm, we cannot achieve the legal ought. Figure 2 shows de
logical constitution and the relationships.
A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System 5
(a) Pyramid. (b) Relationships.
Fig. 2. The logical constitution.
4 Related Works
In the past, initial legal ontology development efforts in Europe were influenced
by hopes and trends in research on legal expert systems based on syllogistic
approaches to legal interpretation [1]. The first monograph on legal ontologies
[14] was published as early as 1995. The literature suggests that legal ontologies
may be distinguished by the levels of abstraction of the ideas they represent [2],
with the key distinction being between core and domain levels. The core level
ontology is a model of general concepts that are believed to be central to the
understanding of law and may be used in all legal domains [14].
Currently, most legal ontologies being developed are domain-specific ontolo-
gies [2]. More recent contributions in ontologies include [9] (1) the LKIF-Core
Ontology, (2) the LRI-Core Ontology, (3) the DOLCE+CLO (Core Legal On-
tology), and (4) the Ontology of Fundamental Legal Concepts.
Although these approaches focus on (i) legal common law ontologies and (ii)
domain-specific ontologies, we are primarily concerned with the civil law sys-
tems. In this sense, we created a legal ontology of Relationships for the civil law
system written in OntoUML aiming to capture a clear, concise and unambiguous
view of the domain. By doing so, we systematized and unfolded the dependence
between legal norms with an emphasis on relationships existing in civil law, con-
sequently, allowing a shared understanding of the concepts and relationships,
enabling interoperability.
5 Legal ontology of Relationships for a Civil Law System
This section presents our ontology, which offers a legal ontology of relationships
for a civil law system. The ontology covers the concepts by connecting multi-
6 Alexandre Lopes Machado and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
ple albeit complementary levels of granularity. It is represented in OntoUML,
comprising concepts, relations and cardinality constraints.
The definition of the present legal ontology was based on a detailed exami-
nation of the civil law theories especially the Core Theory of Law [10]. The main
goal of the ontology, which is inherent to a reference ontology, is: (i) addressing
data/standard integration between legal Portals in order to support the process-
ing of complex queries in heterogeneous information sources; (ii) conveying a
legal knowledge base; (iii) providing a domain theory striving for independence
of codification languages as much as specific applications and also (iv) supporting
reasoning knowledge-based systems.
We build an ontology of relationships to represent the relationships for civil
law system [12]. The definition of the legal ontology was based on a detailed
examination of the civil law theories especially Core Theory of Law [10]. We
consider this theory as representative of the minimal core that should be sup-
ported via dedicated ontologies. The concepts and relationships are described in
the sequence. Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6 show the OntoUML diagram.
– Written Norm: a precept required or recognized as such by the state. Ob-
jective social formula will be imperatively expressed all by the State.
– Norm: a rule, article of law or legal prescription.
– Effectiveness: it is the production of legal effect of a law or administrative
act. Effective act is one that produces effects. Noneffective is the event
in which a legal norm, or part of, loses effectiveness.
– Validity: It is related to the existence of a norm in the legal system in one
or more time periods. A lawful norm prevails until it is revoked or until the
expiration of the period provided therein. It is between the existence that it
is formalized by enactment, and effectiveness, which arises from the social
norm of compliance. Unlawful is the event for which a legal norm, or part
of, loses validity.
Fig. 3. Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System (Part 1). The red words
show the instances.
A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System 7
– Constitutional Norm: is a superior norm above all other norms and there-
fore the rules contravening with the Constitution shall be deemed unconsti-
tutional.Basic Norms: norms resulting from the initial process of the con-
stitution. Derived Norms: norms derived from constitutional norm amend-
ments. We emphasize that some of the clause amendments will not change
the constitution, so reading the text of the amendment is required.
– Infra-Constitutional Norm: is an inferior norm that seeks to raise its
ground of validity in superior norms and so on, up to the Constitution level.
– Primary Norm: They are the primary norms such as laws or normative acts.
– Secondary Norm: They are secondary or administrative norms. They aim to
regulate or implement what is provided in primary norms. They are assessed,
developed and approved by a Legislative chamber. We emphasize that this
type of norm cannot change the Legal system, creating rights and obligations.
– Constitution: system of legal rules, which regulates the form of the state,
the form of their government, the mode of acquisition and execution of power,
the establishment of its bodies, the limits of its action, the fundamental
rights and guarantees of man [10]. In other words, it is the set of norms that
organizes the elements of the state.
Fig. 4. Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System (Part 2).
– Remission: association that occurs between norms (Remised and Remise)
for forward to a part of a normative text point with/without relationships
between subjects.
– Remised: norm that wards refers to a certain Remise norm.
– Remise: final norm sent by Remised norm.
8 Alexandre Lopes Machado and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
Fig. 5. Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System (Part 3).
Fig. 6. Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System (Final).
6 Running Example
Without claiming to be the best solution, our ontology was achieved in practice.
Brazil is a country of continental proportions, composed of 27 states and more
than five thousand municipalities, or cities, as no distinction is made between
town and city in Brazil. As a federal system, we have three levels of government
(federal, state, and city), with each state and municipality having its own leg-
islative chamber. While states and cities follow a unicameral system, the federal
level has a bicameral system, with the National Congress divided into a Cham-
ber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. These legislatures generate numerous
laws, or normative acts. So the abundance of normative acts is very significant.
To illustrate an example, as much as serving as an evaluation resource, we
posed the following Competence Question (CQ). This question involves a
scenario in which one person would like to know about a particular public con-
test. The person may know nothing about laws or normative acts involved in
this scenario. The question is described below:
CQ1: Can I apply for numerous government jobs?
As mentioned before, we would have to search laws at the three levels (federal,
state and city). The starting point would be the Constitution of Brazil. Our
question is about one of the Constitution’s subjects.
Based only on the official document of the Constitution, it is not possible to
answer this question because this content is not covered solely by the constitu-
tion. Moreover, we do not know the relations between the constitution and other
A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System 9
normative acts. And the language expressed (HTML) does not take into account
this expressivity. Related for other instances, the situation is the same. The an-
swer for this question is in two legal documents. The applying for government
jobs is a strict subject of federal law. So the normative acts are written by Fed-
eral instance. Figures 7 (a) and (b) show legal documents involved and norms,
respectively. The two normative acts are: 1) The Constitution of Brazil: Ar-
tigo 37, Inciso XVI and Alı́neas and Artigo 40, Parágrafo 11; 2) 8.112 Law:
Capı́tulo III. The blue words show the class’s name. The red words show the
instances
(a) Legal documents (written norms) involved.
(b) Legal norms.
Fig. 7. Running example.
10 Alexandre Lopes Machado and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
7 Conclusions and Perspectives
This paper described a legal ontology of relationships for the civil law system
taking into account the dependence between legal norms with emphasis on rela-
tionships existing in civil law. By dealing with reference ontology, our approach
deals with the challenge of legal information modeling, capturing a clear, concise
and unambiguous view of the domain, as well as systematizing and revealing the
dependence between legal norms, consequently, allowing a shared understanding
of the concepts and relationships, enabling interoperability.
Two important modeling choices should be emphasized. The first one con-
cerns the language OntoUML. One of the OntoUML model lies in the more
intuitive understanding of the domain, which allows a quicker and improved
visualization of concepts and relations. The second modeling choice concerns
the representation model. By using a representation model such as OntoUML,
knowledge can be identified, acquired and analyzed, and then formalized. It was
important for help modelers to externalize knowledge about the domain. The
notion of relator played an important role to help modelers to externalize their
tacit knowledge about the domain. By doing this, we presented how much of
important domain knowledge remained tacit in the minds of the modeler and,
consequently, renders the ontology a valuable add-on.
The ontology can offer a viable means of retrieving legal knowledge, instead
of an enormous and confusing amount of documents and information as cur-
rent applications do. However, OntoUML is not a codification language. So, a
number of different implementations and applications can be produced in order
to supporting reasoning knowledge-based systems. Due to space limitations, we
concentrate here on OntoUML models. More details about our implementation
can be found in [12].
The challenges faced by legal ontology engineering are great, and the lim-
itations of legal ontologies are substantial. Nevertheless, the potential of legal
ontologies is immense. Law-related professionals and legal experts have a central
role to play in the successful development of legal ontologies and legal semantic
applications. In this paper, we underline the major aspects of our ontology and
emphasize its potential application as a semantic reference for various civil law
systems in the world.
Several research questions about legal information retrieval are remain unan-
swered, and will be tackled in future works. In particular, in addition to con-
sidering more relations in legal documents, we will explore other relationships
based on legal doctrine. We plan to devise a method to facilitate the approach
application on a large scale.
References
1. V. R. Benjamins, P. Casanovas, J. Breuker, and A. Gangemi, editors. Law and the
Semantic Web: Legal Ontologies, Methodologies, Legal Information Retrieval, and
Applications, volume 3369, 2005.
A Legal Ontology of Relationships for Civil Law System 11
2. J. Breuker, P. Casanovas, M. C. Klein, and E. Francesconi. Law, Ontologies and
the Semantic Web - Channelling the Legal Information Flood, chapter The Flood,
the Channels and the Dykes: Managing Legal Information in a Globalized and
Digital World. IOS Press, 2009.
3. N. Guarino. Formal ontology, conceptual analysis and knowledge representation.
Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud., 43(5-6):625–640, Dec. 1995.
4. G. Guizzardi. Ontological foundations for structural conceptual models. PhD thesis,
Enschede, 2005.
5. G. Guizzardi. On ontology, ontologies, conceptualizations, modeling languages, and
(meta)models. In Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Databases and Informa-
tion Systems IV: Selected Papers from the Seventh International Baltic Conference
DB&IS’2006, pages 18–39, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The Netherlands, 2007.
IOS Press.
6. G. Guizzardi, A. P. das Graças, and R. S. S. Guizzardi. Design Patterns and Induc-
tive Modeling Rules to Support the Construction of Ontologically Well-Founded
Conceptual Models in OntoUML. In CAiSE Workshops, pages 402–413, 2011.
7. G. Guizzardi, L. Ferreira Pires, and M. S. van. An ontology-based approach for
evaluating the domain appropriateness and comprehensibility appropriateness of
modeling languages. In ACM/IEEE 8th International Conference on Model Driven
Engineering Languages and Systems, number 2005-1 in Lecture Notes in Computer
Science LNCS (forthcoming), Montego Bay, Jamaica, 2005. Springer-Verlag.
8. J. Heflin and J. Hendler. Semantic interoperability on the web. In Extreme Markup
Languages 2000, page 16, 2000.
9. R. Hoekstra, J. Breuker, M. D. Bello, and E. Boer. The lkif core ontology of
basic legal concepts. In In Pompeu Casanovas, Maria Angela Biasiotti, Enrico
Francesconi, and Maria Teresa Sagri, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on
Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques (LOAIT 2007, 2007.
10. H. Kelsen. Pure Theory of Law. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd, Oxford, 1967.
11. H. Kelsen. Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory. Clarendon Press, Oxford,
2002.
12. A. L. Machado. Modelo Conceitual Formal de Relacionamentos do Ordenamento
Jurı́dico Positivo. PhD thesis, Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA), 2013.
13. A. M. Ouksel and A. Sheth. Semantic interoperability in global information sys-
tems. In ACM SIGMOD Record, volume 28, pages 5–12, March 1999.
14. A. Valente. Legal Knowledge Engineering: A Modelling Approach. PhD thesis,
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1995.