Abstract
This paper addresses legal classifications by exploring the connections and possible synergies between legal doctrine and computational ontologies. In recent years legal ontologies have attracted a growing interest, not only from knowledge engineers but also from legal scholars. Indeed, several controversial issues arise concerning the elicitation and structuring of domain (legal) knowledge, and legal theory can provide useful insights in this respect. The existing tradition of definition and classification of legal concepts by legal doctrine can be regardes as an intellectual capital for the extraction and characterisation of concepts to be included in legal ontologies. The question arises as to what extent doctrinal structures can be reused in the construction of legal ontologies, and as to what extent doctrinal analyses can draw inspiration from computational ontologies.
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Notes
- 1.
A rich literature exists on the definition of explicit knowledge, usually to contrast it with implicit knowledge. A landmark contribution to the distinction is (Polanyi 1966), where explicit knowledge is defined as codifiable knowledge due to its propositional form. On the contrary, implicit knowledge is usually non propositional and therefore difficult to codify.
- 2.
Not necessarily limited to traditional legal professions (lawyers, barristers, judges, …), but including other professionals having somehow to do with the law, such as mediators, economists, university professors, or the so-called paralegal professionals (Casanovas 1998).
- 3.
This corresponds to the notion of personal knowledge and capability as defined by Eraut (1997, 1998): “what individual persons bring to situations that enables them to think, interact and perform”, and which includes: “Codified knowledge[0] in the form(s) in which the person uses it; know-how in the form of skills and practices; personal understandings of people and situations; accumulated memories of cases and episodic events (Eraut, 2000a, 2004e); other aspects of personal expertise, practical wisdom and tacit knowledge; self-knowledge, attitudes, values and emotions.” (Eraut 2007). Similarly, in the legal field, “professional knowledge of a legal topic […] involves a particular knowledge of: (i) statutes, codes, and legal rules; (ii) professional training; (iii) legal procedures; (iv) public policies; (v) everyday routinely cases; (vi) practical situations; (vii) people’s most common reactions to previous decisions on similar subjects. (Casanovas et al. 2006: 266).
- 4.
Situated cognition is a transdisciplinary notion that applies to a wide range of scientific domains (social sciences, linguistics, animal cognition, evolutionary biology, …) and that more concretely was manifested in cognitive sciences and AI research as systems thinking, which implies studying things in a holistic way, as a dynamic and complex whole located in an environment (Clancey 2008). This approach has been very controversial in psychology and cognitive science as well as in AI (Ibidem), since it seems to question the orthodox physical symbol system hypothesis (for a theoretical analysis of the opposed views and an attempt to bring them together them see Slezak (1999); for a taste of the discussion see the response of Clancey (1992) to Sandberg and Wielinga’s critical paper with regard to situated cognition (1992)). Situated cognition highlights precisely the non propositional and environmental aspects of knowledge and this is why it can be considered one of the foundations of a theory of practical legal knowledge.
- 5.
It is acknowledged that evidence of personal knowledge must come from observations of performance in order to have a holistic rather than a fragmented approach to knowledge, since the knowledge used in particular situations is available in a compiled form ready to be used (Eraut 2007).
- 6.
For a focus on the fifth type of legal discourse see Casanovas and Casellas socio-legal approach (Casanovas and Casellas 2010).
- 7.
We will be using objects as a synonymous of concepts.
- 8.
As stated in Art. 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
- 9.
The relevance of the explicit understanding of the intended meanings for various types of arcs and links in semantic network structures has been highlighted by Woods (1975).
- 10.
Ontologies and databases are indeed constrained by an external set of rules whereas a graph is not necessarily constrained and can reflect an emergent system itself, with no external control (Bales and Johnson 2006: 453). If we limit ourselves to explicit conceptual systems as presented by legal doctrine, we are accepting the restrictions imposed by external rules of organisation of concepts, such as the correct construction of a taxonomy following the Aristotelian method of division by genus and differentia. The method of division is presented by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics: “It is such attributes which we have to select, up to the exact point at which they are severally of wider extent than the subject but collectively coextensive with it; for this synthesis must be the substance of the thing.” Nevertheless, the method of division, consisting in the knowledge of how to divide forms into kinds, was already proposed by Plato in the Phaedrus and described in more detail in the Sophist.
- 11.
The EU DALOS project (Drafting Legislation with Ontology-Based Support) is aimed at providing legislators with control over legal concepts and the corresponding vocabulary across several European languages. The DALOS domain ontology represents the consumer law and was manually built with the aid of NLP support (Agnoloni et al. 2007, Francesconi et al. 2007).
- 12.
It has been highlighted that there exist different levels of legal systematization: (i) systematization of legal concepts; (ii) systematization of legal rules in institutions and branches of the law according to the piece of reality that they regulate; (iii) systematization of legal rules on the basis of the values they pursue and their justification; (iv) systematization of those values themselves, establishing an axiological hierarchy (Renauld 1958). Legal doctrine is not always clear as to the object of systematization or classification, as highlighted by Pound (1924: 941): “[…]it is not uncommon for analytical jurists, assuming to classify ‘the law’, to move, without apparent consciousness of the transition, from classification of legal precepts to classification of the subject matter of legal precepts, or to classification of the institutions by which that subject matter is made effective by means of legal precepts, and vice versa.”
- 13.
On the idea of legal classification as a knowledge system see (Collins 1997: 57).
- 14.
For instance when a new act changes the definition of a concept like “environmental risk”.
- 15.
Such as when case law establishes that a bicycle will be an instance of the concept of vehicle in the interpretation of a certain act.
- 16.
The BGB (German Civil Code) has actually been criticised as embodying an abstract system of private law, in accordance to the conceptual apparatus built by the pandectists rather than a system adapted to actual conditions of life in society (Wieacker 1995: 376).
- 17.
On the idea of doctrinal subsystems which aspire to consistence and coherence see (Collins 1997: 60–61).
- 18.
The same concept can even exist in different subdomains and have different meanings in each of them. Concepts like “wilful misconduct” and “negligence”, for instance, are not the same in criminal theory and in civil responsibility theory) (Vernengo 1986: 235–236).
- 19.
- 20.
It has to be noted that that the sense in which the term logical was used in that period differs from its current formal understanding. In late XIXth century legal discourse the adjective “logic” was used to characterise something analytical, clear, ordered, not contradictory, but by no means included a precise reference to the properties of modern symbolic logic as derived from the works of George Boole (1854 Laws of Thought) and Gottlob Frege (1879 Begriffsschrift- usually translated as concept writing or concept notation), among others.
- 21.
The concept of legal transaction is actually more common in the analysis of legal doctrine than in the domain of practicing law, for it is not regarded as a legal category in various legal orders. On the historical origins and the presence of this category in the various legal systems see (Sacco 2005: 278 ff.).
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (Masolo et al. 2003).
- 25.
The distinction between contract as an act and contract as a norm was introduced by Kelsen (Díez- Picazo, Gullón 2001: 29).
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Fernández-Barrera, M., Sartor, G. (2011). The Legal Theory Perspective: Doctrinal Conceptual Systems vs. Computational Ontologies. In: Sartor, G., Casanovas, P., Biasiotti, M., Fernández-Barrera, M. (eds) Approaches to Legal Ontologies. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0120-5_2
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