Palmirani on Legal Resources Modelling in the Semantic Web for Implementing eGov

Professor Monica Palmirani of Università di Bologna Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche «Antonio Cicu» and Centro Interdipartimentale de Ricerca in Storia del Diritto e Informatica Giuridica (CIRSFID) presented a lecture entitled Legal Resources Modelling in the Semantic Web for Implementing eGov on 11 November 2009 at CodeX: The Stanford University Center for Computers and Law, in Palo Alto, California, USA.

Click here for audio of the presentation.

Click here for the presentation slides.

In this presentation, Professor Palmirani provides an accessible overview of XML as applied to legal documents. Professor Palmirani explains how legal XML can facilitate the representation of legal concepts and legal rules in the metadata associated with legal documents. Professor Palmirani also shows how legal XML can:

• improve legal document management by enabling the encoding — in the metadata associated with a legal document — of all legislative actions and alterations to a document throughout its lifecycle;
• enhance public access to legal information by allowing the presentation of legal documents in multiple formats and media;
• facilitate eParticipation by enabling the identification of citizens’ contributions to legal documents in the metadata associated with those documents; and
• ease the updating of certain governmental information systems — particularly in areas of public administration in which the law frequently changes, such as taxation, securities, and environment — by facilitating dynamic updating of rules-based applications as new laws are enacted or existing laws are amended.

For those new to these topics, Professor Palmirani’s presentation offers an excellent introduction to legal XML, the legal Semantic Web, and the role of rule markup languages in connection with legal documents.