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An ontology in OWL for legal case-based reasoning

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Abstract

The paper gives ontologies in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for Legal Case-based Reasoning (LCBR) systems, giving explicit, formal, and general specifications of a conceptualisation LCBR. Ontologies for different systems allows comparison and contrast between them. OWL ontologies are standardised, machine-readable formats that support automated processing with Semantic Web applications. Intermediate concepts, concepts between base-level concepts and higher level concepts, are central in LCBR. The main issues and their relevance to ontological reasoning and to LCBR are discussed. Two LCBR systems (AS-CATO, which is based on CATO, and IBP) are analysed in terms of basic and intermediate concepts. Central components of the OWL ontologies for these systems are presented, pointing out differences and similarities. The main novelty of the paper is the ontological analysis and representation in OWL of LCBR systems. The paper also emphasises the important issues concerning the representation and reasoning of intermediate concepts.

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Notes

  1. There are several OWL reasoners. Pellet is open source, supports a wide range of features, is robust, scalable, and recommended by Jena, which is a Java framework for building Semantic Web applications. http://pellet.owldl.com.

  2. As we shall discuss, the Factor Hierarchy is not an IS-A hierarchy as is usually found in ontologies.

  3. We found variant labels and relationships in a range of sources (Aleven 1997; Chorley and Bench-Capon 2005a, b; Aleven and Ashley 1993, 1995; Brüninghaus and Ashley 2003a, b; Ashley and Brüninghaus 2003), indicating the need to align the ontologies. We have taken Aleven (1997) as the basis and aligned subsequent factors to it; however, we leave for future research a “definitive” ontology of factors.

  4. Aleven (1997, pp. 240–241) is ambiguous about the sides of Intermediate Legal Concepts and Legal Issues, indicating both a side and how to argue for either side. We present our interpretation.

  5. Brüninghaus and Ashley (2003a, b) and Ashley and Brüninghaus (2003) relabel the factors of Aleven (1997). We follow Aleven (1997), correlating the factors of Brüninghaus and Ashley (2003a), giving the factor number of Aleven (1997): Information-Unique = F104 Info-Valuable (or F15 Unique-Product?); Maintain-Secrecy = F102 Efforts-To-Maintain-Secrecy; Improper-Means = F110 Improper-Means-Conclusion.

  6. There is some unclarity about whether Level 1–3 factors are presumed to be decided for one side in the absence of support otherwise. For example, if Info-Valuable is not challenged or raised in the case, then it might be taken to be decided by default for P; there would be no court case were this not so. Similarly, Improper-Means-Conclusion would, if not raised, appear to be presumed to be decided for D; if it is raised, P bears a burden of proof to show that improper means were used. Another option is to assume no defaults, but that the sides must be decided for every higher-level factor. We assume defaults all for P, leaving other issues for future examination.

  7. Contact the author for the relevant files.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented at the Jurix Workshop on Workshop on Modeling Legal Cases, Leiden, Dec. 12, 2007. The author thanks reviewers, workshop participants, Trevor Bench-Capon, and Katie Atkinson for their comments. During the writing of this paper, the author was supported by the Estrella Project (The European project for Standardised Transparent Representations in order to Extend Legal Accessibility (Estrella, IST-2004-027655)).

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  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

    Adam Wyner

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Wyner, A. An ontology in OWL for legal case-based reasoning. Artif Intell Law 16, 361–387 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-008-9070-8

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