Legal jurisdictions

[Frank Bennett]

Hi. I'm starting to work on the zotero Bluebook style for legal
materials. I haven't started in on legislation and decisions yet, but
I've come across discussion there of the need for a jurisdiction
field, which raises a general question over how to "locate" an
individual piece of legal material. I thought I would chime in here
with a few thoughts, just in case they might be relevant. I do not
have much of a grasp on the syntax or the content of the specification
documents here, so if what I say doesn't mesh, please feel free to put
me back on track. Here goes.

Currently, jurisdiction is reflected in the specification by a term
dcterms:Jurisdiction. To thoroughly identify both the significance
and the visual formatting requirements of a decision or piece of
legislation (I'll call these "instruments" below), I'm thinking that
an additional parameter is needed, such as dcterms:JurisdictionLevel.

The specific authority that issues a decision or enacts a rule will be
captured by identifying the court or the legislative body passing the
decision. Jurisdiction, to my mind, refers to the overarching
rulemaking framework of which the instrument forms a part. Examples
would be "International", "United States", "Australia", "European
Union", "UNIDROIT", or "Belize". This information is significant in
part because the rules controlling the effect of instruments at
various levels within the framework are framework-specific. For
example, rules relating to precedent or to preemption may vary between
different nations or federal systems.

Jurisdiction is also important for visual formatting of citations.
Archives for a given rulemaking framework are maintained and
referenced according to "local" conventions, and as a result, each has
its own citation format that is familiar to professionals working with
that category of material. US and UK cases, for example, contain
similar items of data, but are formatted slightly differently.

JurisdictionLevel would refer to the class or character of the
instrument within the rulemaking framework. Examples for peremptory
rules would be "statute", "ordinance", "rule", "proclamation",
"executive order", "treaty". In visual formatting, the category of
such an instrument is signalled in part by differences in formatting
conventions, which are again specific to the jurisdiction. The same
is true for decisions, examples of which would include "judicial
decision", "administrative ruling", "tribunal decision", "arbitral
award".

As I say, I am out of my depth in the general schema, but I offer
these thoughts on the off chance that they will be helpful in some
way.

[Frank Bennett]

(Just a note to say that I should have written in my previous post
that, "I'm starting to *look at* the zotero Bluebook style", since the
style already exists, and I'm just doing some late-comer tinkering.)

FB

[Bruce D'Arcus]

Hi Frank,

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 6:51 PM, Frank Bennett <bierc...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Currently, jurisdiction is reflected in the specification by a term
> dcterms:Jurisdiction. To thoroughly identify both the significance
> and the visual formatting requirements of a decision or piece of
> legislation (I'll call these "instruments" below), I'm thinking that
> an additional parameter is needed, such as dcterms:JurisdictionLevel.
>
> The specific authority that issues a decision or enacts a rule will be
> captured by identifying the court or the legislative body passing the
> decision. Jurisdiction, to my mind, refers to the overarching
> rulemaking framework of which the instrument forms a part.

This may reflect the fact that I'm a geographer and not a legal
scholar, but I think of jurisdiction (which I've thought a bit about
in my own research) as the territorial authority that has sovereignty
over a given issue.

So a court has jurisdiction over certain matters, within certain
territories. the 9th federal circuit court in the U.S. covers a
certain regional territory (am not sure exactly how that works), but
it's jurisdiction is national.

Likewise, a legally-binding document issued by a court (like, say, a
ruling) is valid within that same jurisdiction by virtue of having
been issued by that legal body.

> Examples would be "International", "United States", "Australia", "European
> Union", "UNIDROIT", or "Belize". This information is significant in
> part because the rules controlling the effect of instruments at
> various levels within the framework are framework-specific. For
> example, rules relating to precedent or to preemption may vary between
> different nations or federal systems.
>
> Jurisdiction is also important for visual formatting of citations.
> Archives for a given rulemaking framework are maintained and
> referenced according to "local" conventions, and as a result, each has
> its own citation format that is familiar to professionals working with
> that category of material. US and UK cases, for example, contain
> similar items of data, but are formatted slightly differently.

OK.

> JurisdictionLevel would refer to the class or character of the
> instrument within the rulemaking framework. Examples for peremptory
> rules would be "statute", "ordinance", "rule", "proclamation",
> "executive order", "treaty". In visual formatting, the category of
> such an instrument is signalled in part by differences in formatting
> conventions, which are again specific to the jurisdiction. The same
> is true for decisions, examples of which would include "judicial
> decision", "administrative ruling", "tribunal decision", "arbitral
> award".

This is a little more confusing to me. I'm curious: why do you use the
"level" metaphor to describe this?

Bruce

[Patrick Murray-John]

Hi all,

I figure that people in this group will be interested in this, if you
haven't seen it already. The University of Hudderfield Library has made
13 years worth of their circulation data openly available as XML [1] .
It looks really exciting for librarians and other bookish researchers.

I've RDFized it (mapping items to bibo:Book), and put up a SPARQL
endpoint for it [2] . You can get the XSLTs I wrote, and look at a
first exhibit for browsing the data at my blog post about it [3]

[1] http://www.daveyp.com/blog/archives/528
[2] http://demos.patrickgmj.net/HuddersfieldLib/endpoint.php
[3]
http://patrickgmj.net/blog/semantifying-university-of-huddersfield-librarys-circulation-data

Cheers,
Patrick

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Patrick Murray-John <pgos...@umw.edu> wrote:

> I've RDFized it (mapping items to bibo:Book), and put up a SPARQL
> endpoint for it [2] . You can get the XSLTs I wrote, and look at a
> first exhibit for browsing the data at my blog post about it [3]

Nice!

Re: the XSLT, a tip: google for "xslt" and "push processing." It might
prove helpful when you deal with more complex data ...

Bruce

[Patrick Gosetti-Murray-John]

Bruce,

Thanks...and yes, it isn't the best XSL ever written! (That's what happens when I get overly excited about rdfizing a big pile of data!)

Patrick

>>> "Bruce D'Arcus" <bda...@gmail.com> 12/15/08 2:23 PM >>>

[Frederick Giasson]

Hi Patrick!

> I figure that people in this group will be interested in this, if you
> haven't seen it already. The University of Hudderfield Library has made
> 13 years worth of their circulation data openly available as XML [1] .
> It looks really exciting for librarians and other bookish researchers.
>
> I've RDFized it (mapping items to bibo:Book), and put up a SPARQL
> endpoint for it [2] . You can get the XSLTs I wrote, and look at a
> first exhibit for browsing the data at my blog post about it [3]
>

Seems a good start! However, is it normal that the sparql endpoint only
returns about 10 triples? Would prefer assessing the dataset using the
endpoint instead of exhibit :)

thanks!

Take care,

Fred

[Patrick Murray-John]

Fred,

Hmm...that doesn't seem normal -- it should be set to return unlimited
numbers. A couple quick queries I just did seemed to come back ok with
LIMIT 100.

I know that some queries take much longer than I'd like, and since it's
on a shared server I sometime hit resource limits. I'll see if my
server logs can tell me anything.

Can you tell me the queries you are trying? Maybe this indicates
something screwy in my data?

Thanks,
Patrick

[Frederick Giasson]

Hi Patrick,

> Hmm...that doesn't seem normal -- it should be set to return unlimited
> numbers. A couple quick queries I just did seemed to come back ok with
> LIMIT 100.
>
> I know that some queries take much longer than I'd like, and since it's
> on a shared server I sometime hit resource limits. I'll see if my
> server logs can tell me anything.
>
> Can you tell me the queries you are trying? Maybe this indicates
> something screwy in my data?
>

Thanks but it is fine now; I was wondering since the default limit has
been removed; so I am wondering about some possible caching issue with
the browser. In any case, working now, thanks!

Btw, what is the dbms behind that endpoint?

Thanks!

Take care,

Fred

[Patrick Murray-John]

Fred,

Glad to hear it!

It's on a hosted server running MySQL 5, with ARC2 doing all the work.
Is that the info you were looking for?

Patrick