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INTERNET-DRAFT P. Spinosa
Intended Status: Informational (ICT consultant)
Expires: February 10, 2018 E. Francesconi
ITTIG/CNR
C. Lupo
(ICT consultant)
August 9, 2017
A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace
for Sources of Law (LEX)
draft-spinosa-urn-lex-11.txt
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Abstract
This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace
Identification (NID) convention as prescribed by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for identifying, naming, assigning, and managing
persistent resources in the legal domain.
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 General Characteristics of the System . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Linking a LEX Name to a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 Use of LEX Names in References . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.7 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.8 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.9 Syntax Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 Registration Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3 Specifications of Registration Template . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1 Identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Conformance with URN Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3 Validation mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4 General Syntax and features of the LEX Identifier . . . . . . 16
4.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2 Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3 Case sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs . . . . . . . . . 17
4.5 Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.6 Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5 Specific Syntax and features of the LEX Identifier . . . . . . 18
5.1 Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks . . . . . . . . 18
5.2 Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.3 Ordinal Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6 Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier . . . . . . . . . 19
6.1 Basic Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3 The Structure of the Local Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level . . . 21
6.5 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 23
6.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation
Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.8 Sources of Law References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.1 Specifying the <jurisdiction> element of the LEX
identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment . . . . . . 27
7.3 Identifier Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
7.4 Identifier persistence considerations . . . . . . . . . . 28
8 Principles of the Resolution Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
8.1 The General Architecture of the System . . . . . . . . . 28
8.2 Catalogues for Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
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8.3 Suggested resolver behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
9 Namespace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
10 Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
11 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
11.1 NID Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11.2 Jurisdiction-code Registratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
12 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
12.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
12.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
13 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
14 Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of
the "lex" namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level . 40
B1 The <authority> element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
B1.1 Indication of the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
B1.2 Multiple Issuers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
B1.3 Indication of the Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
B1.4 Indication of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
B1.5 Indication of the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
B1.6 Conventions for the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
B2 The <measure> element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure . . . 41
B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure . . . . . . 42
B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases . 42
B3 The <details> element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
B3.1 Indication of the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
B3.2 Multiple Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
B3.3 Unnumbered Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
B3.4 Multiple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
B4 The <annex> element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
B4.1 Formal Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
B4.2 Annexes of Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the <version> Element of the
Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
C1 The <version> element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document . . . . . . 46
C1.2 Identification of the Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Attachment D -- Http-based LEX identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
D1 Http-based URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
D2 The http-based LEX identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . 50
D3 The http-based LEX identifier at Work Level . . . . . . . . . 51
D4 The http-based LEX identifier at Expression Level . . . . . . 51
D5 The http-based LEX identifier at Manifestation Level . . . . . 52
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1 Introduction
1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex"
The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign an unequivocal
identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law.
To the extent of this namespace, "sources of law" include any legal
document within the domain of legislation, case law and
administrative acts or regulations; moreover potential "sources of
law" (acts under the process of law formation, as bills) are included
as well. Therefore "legal doctrine" is explicitly not covered.
The identifier is conceived so that its recommended construction
depends only on the characteristics (details) of the document itself
and is, therefore, independent from the document's on-line
availability, its physical location, and access mode. The identifier
itself is assigned by the jurisdiction that owns the identified
document. Even a document that is not available online at all may
still have a URN LEX that identifies it.
This identifier will be used as a way to represent the references
(and more generally, any type of relation) among the various sources
of law. In an on-line environment with resources distributed among
different Web publishers, uniform resource names allow simplified
global interconnection of legal documents by means of automated
hypertext linking. LEX URNs are therefore particularly useful when
they can be mapped into or associated with locators such as HTTP URIs
1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard
The following entities support this proposal at the time of
publication:
- ITTIG/CNR (Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of
the Italian National Research Council) - Italy;
- National Centre for ICT in Public Administration - Italy;
- PRODASEN - IT Department of the Federal Senate - Brazil;
- LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - USA
1.3 The Context
In the last few years a number of initiatives have arisen in the
field of legal document management.
Since 2001 the Italian Government, through the National Center for
Information Technology in the Public Administration, the Ministry of
Justice and ITTIG-CNR (the Institute of Legal Information Theory and
Techniques of the Italian National Research Council) promoted the
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NormeInRete project. It was aimed at introducing standards for
sources of law description and identification using XML and URN
techniques.
Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for the
description of legal sources [FRAN]: for example the Metalex project,
promoted by the University of Amsterdam and adopted by the Dutch Tax
and Customs Administration, the Belgian Public Centers for Welfare
and others; LexDania project in Denmark supported by the Danish
Ministry of Justice; CHLexML in Switzerland developed by COPIUR, the
Coordination Office for the Electronic Publication of Legal Data
Federal Office of Justice; eLaw in Austria mainly coordinated by the
Austrian Parliament.
Such initiatives, based in synergies between government, national
research institutes, and universities, have defined national XML
standards for legal document management, as well as schemes for legal
document identification.
Outside Europe, similar initiatives have faced similar problems. For
example, the Brazilian Senate carried out a feasibility study to
provide unique and transparent identifiers to sources of law on the
basis of the IFLA-FRBR model.
Similarly, the Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented
Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and
Ontologies) project provides a set of guidelines for e-Parliament
services in a Pan-African context by proposing an XML document schema
providing sophisticated description possibilities for several
Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary
records, etc.).
Finally, the Tasmanian Government provided advanced legislative
information services through the EnAct project. It gave searchable
consolidated Tasmanian legislation by automating much of the
legislative drafting and consolidation process, as well as using SGML
document representation. Numerous less-visible efforts in the United
States and elsewhere have struggled with similar issues.
Several of these identifiers are based on a URN schema. The first
national standard was defined in Italy within the NormeInRete
project; to this the Brazilian Lexml standard followed. Denmark,
Hungary, Slovenia and Switzerland expressed their interest in URN
identifier for legislation as well. All these standards have a common
internal structure, regarding both the hierarchy and the elements
content.
In today's information society the processes of political, social and
economic integration of European Union member states as well as the
increasing integration of the world-wide legal and economic processes
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are causing a growing interest in exchanging legal information
knowledge at national and trans-national levels.
The growing desire for improved quality and accessibility of legal
information amplifies the need for interoperability among legal
information systems across national boundaries. A common open
standard used to identify sources of law at international level is an
essential prerequisite for interoperability.
Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their
intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique.
The need for a unequivocal identifier of sources of law in different
EU Member States, based on open standards and able to provide
advanced modalities of document hyper-linking, has been expressed in
several conferences by representatives of the Publications Office of
the European Union (OP), with the aim of promoting interoperability
among national and European institution information systems. Similar
concerns have been raised by international groups concerned with free
access to legal information, and the Permanent Bureau of the Hague
Conference on Private International Law is considering a resolution
that would encourage member states to "adopt neutral methods of
citation of their legal materials, including methods that are medium-
neutral, provider-neutral and internationally consistent". In a
similar direction the CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at European
level, towards the definition of a standard interchange format for
sources of law, including recommendations for defining naming
conventions to them.
The need of unequivocal identifiers for sources of law is of
particular interest also in the domain of case law. Such need is
extremely felt within both common law systems, where cases are the
main law sources, and civil law systems, for the importance of
providing an integrated access to cases and legislation, as well as
to track the relationships between them. This domain is characterized
by a high degree of fragmentation in case law information systems,
which usually lack interoperability.
Recently in the European Union, the community institutions have
stressed the need for citizens, businesses, lawyers, prosecutors and
judges to become more aware not only of (directly applicable) EU law,
but also of the various national legal systems. The growing
importance of national judiciaries for the application of Community
law was stressed in the resolution of the European Parliament of 9
July 2008 on the role of the national judge in the European judicial
system.
Similarly the European e-Justice action plans 2009-2013 and 2014-2018
of the Council of the European Union underlined the importance of
cross-border access to national case law, as well as the need for its
standardisation, in view of an integrated access in a decentralized
architecture. In this view the Working Party on Legal Data Processing
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(e-Law) of the Council of the European Union formed a task group to
study the possibilities for improving cross-border access to national
case law. Taking notice of the report of the Working Party's task
group the Council of the EU decided in 2009 to elaborate on a
uniform, European system for the identification of case law (ECLI:
European Case-Law Identifier) and uniform Dublin Core-based set of
metadata.
More recently the Council of the European Union invited the Member
States to introduce in the legal information systems the European
Legislation Identifier (ELI), an http-based Semantic Web oriented
identification system for European Union and Member States
legislation.
LEX identifier is conceived to be general enough, so to provide
guidance at the core of the standard and sufficient flexibility to
cover a wide variety of needs for identifying all the legal documents
of different nature, namely legislative, case-law and administrative
acts. Moreover, it can be effectively used within a federative
environment where different publishers (public and private) can
provide their own items of an act (that is there is more than one
manifestation of the same act).
However specifications and syntax rules of LEX identifier can be used
also for http-based naming convention (Appendix D) to cope with
different requirements in legal information management, for example
the need of having an identifier compliant with the Linked Open Data
principles.
This document supplements the required name syntax with a suggested
naming convention that interprets all these recommendations into an
original solution for sources of law identification.
1.4 General Characteristics of the System
Registrants wish now to promote interoperability among legal
information systems by the definition of a namespace convention and
structure that will create and manage identifiers for legal
documents. The identifiers will be:
- globally unique
- transparent
- bidirectional
- persistent
- location-independent, and
- language-neutral.
These qualities will facilitate legal document management as well as
provide a mechanism of stable cross-collections and cross-country
references.
Transparency means that given an act and its relevant metadata
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(issuing authority, type of measure, etc.) it is possible to create
the related urn identifier. Moreover this identifier is able to
unequivocally identify the related act. These two properties makes
the identification system bidirectional (from an act to its URN and
from a URN to the related act).
Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that will
promote adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to
official-language requirements. The proposed standard will provide
useful guidance to both public and private groups that create,
promulgate, and publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize
the potential for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, while
preserving sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document types
and to respect the need for local control of collections by an
equally diverse assortment of administrative entities.
As usual, the problem is to provide the right amount guidance at the
core of the standard while providing sufficient flexibility to cover
a wide variety of needs. The proposed LEX standard does this by
splitting the identifier into parts. The first part uses a
predetermined standard ("country/jurisdiction name standard") to
specify the country (or more generally the jurisdiction) of origin
for the legal document being identified; the remainder ("local name")
is intended for local use in identifying documents issued in that
country or jurisdiction. This second part depends only on sources of
law identification system operating in that nation and it is mainly
composed by a formalized information related to the enacting
authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly the annex.
The identification system based on uniform names MUST include:
- a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously
any addressed source of law, namely legislation, case law and
administrative acts, issued by any authority (intergovernmental,
supranational, national, regional and local) at any time (past,
present and future);
- a resolution mechanism - in a distributed environment - that ties a
uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding
resources.
This document only considers the first of these requirements. It also
contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution
service and to the corresponding software.
1.5 Linking a LEX Name to a Document
The LEX name is linked to the document through meta-information which
may be specified:
- internally to the document itself through a specific element within
an XML schema or by an HTML META tag;
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- externally by means of an RDF triple, a specific attribute in a
database, etc.
One of these modalities is necessary for enabling automated
construction and updating of catalogues (distributed and centralized)
and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name
of a document with its physical location(s). The standard assumes no
particular relationship between the originator of the document, its
publisher, and the implementer of catalogues or resolution services.
They may be the same entity, or not.
1.6 Use of LEX Names in References
LEX names will be used on a large scale in references as a HREF
attribute value of the hypertext link to the referred document.
This link can be created in two ways:
- by manually inserting, in the referring document, the link with the
uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure especially for
documents that are already on-line;
- by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily)
the link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a
text: this is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a
certain percentage of errors, since references are not always
accurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless be
acceptable for already published documents.
In any case, whatever the method adopted is, new documents produced
in XML format compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema, SHOULD
express references through the uniform name of the document referred
to.
1.7 Definitions
According to this document, the following terms are used in the
following meaning:
- Source of Law:
is a general concept, and is used to refer to legislation, case
law, regulations and administrative acts. In its broadest sense,
the source of law is anything that can be conceived of as the
originator of 'erga omnes' legal rules. In this document "source of
law" refers also to acts during their formation cycle as bills that
might or might not become sources of law;
- Jurisdictional Registrar:
is an organization which shares and defines in any country or
jurisdiction the assignment of the main components of the resource
identifier through which its uniqueness is guaranteed. This task
includes the definition of possible jurisdiction unit and the
primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure) of
uniform name, according to the characteristics of its own state or
institution organization.
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1.8 Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
1.9 Syntax Used in this Document
This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is
based on the ABNF (Augmented Backus-Naur Form) [RFC5234] meta-
language.
2 Registration Template
Namespace Identifier:
"lex" requested according to [RFC8141].
Version:
1.0
Date:
2017-05-25
Registrant:
Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG)
Italian National Research Council (CNR)
Via de' Barucci, 20
50127 Florence
Italy
e-mail: lex@ittig.cnr.it
phone: +39 055 43995
contact: Enrico Francesconi
e-mail: enrico.francesconi@ittig.cnr.it
Purpose:
The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign an unequivocal
identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources
of law.
In the last few years a number of institutional initiatives
have arisen in the field of legal document management. They
were aimed at introducing standards for sources of law
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description and identification using XML and URI techniques,
respectively (for more details see Section 1.3) LEX identifier
is conceived to be general enough, so to provide guidance at
the core of the standard and sufficient flexibility to cover a
wide variety of needs for identifying all the legal documents
of different nature, namely legislative, case-law and
administrative acts. Moreover, it can be effectively used
within a federative environment where different publishers
(public and private) can provide their own items of an act
(that is there is more than one manifestation of the same act).
The LEX identifier is conceived to be: globally unique,
transparent, bidirectional, persistent, location-independent,
and language-neutral. It is organized into parts. The first
part uses a predetermined standard to specify the country (or
more generally the jurisdiction) of origin for the legal
document being identified; the remainder is intended for local
use in identifying documents issued in that country or
jurisdiction. This second part depends only on sources of law
identification system operating in that nation. For more
details on the nature of the LEX characteristics and the
general internal organization, see Section 1.4.
The LEX name is linked to the document through specific meta-
information, internally (with a tag) or externally (with a
attribute) (for details on this see Section 1.5)
LEX names will be used on a large scale in references either in
(X)HTML document or, more generally, in XML documents format
compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema (see Section 1.6 for
more information).
Syntax:
The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows:
"urn:lex:" NSS
where <NSS> is the Namespace Specific String composed as
follows:
NSS = jurisdiction ":" local-name
where:
<jurisdiction> is the part providing the identification of the
jurisdiction, generally corresponding to the country, where the
source of law is issued. It is also possible to represent
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international organizations (either states or public
administrations or private entities);
<local-name> is the uniform name of the source of law in the
country or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal
structure is common to the already adopted schemas. It is able
to represent all the aspects of an intellectual production, as
it is a legal document, from its initial idea, through its
evolution during the time, to its realisation by different
means (paper, digital, etc.).
LEX specifications gives information on the internal structure
of both <jurisdiction> and <local-name>, including
specifications about case sensitivity, the use of national
characters and diacritics, as well as spaces, connectives,
punctuation marks, abbreviations, acronyms, date formats and
ordinal numbers. For more details on the internal structure and
syntax of the LEX identifier, see Section 3, 4 and 5.
Recently the r- and q- components have been introduced by
[RFC8141]. They provide new and interesting perspectives when
using URNs in a complex sector as sources of law, characterized
by different versions, languages, publishers, and so on. In
particular, by using the r-component at the resolver level, and
therefore at the whole NSS level, you can select from the same
work only expressions written in a given language, or
manifestations published by a particular institutional site,
etc. Using the q-component at the act metadata level, you can
select versions that are valid at a particular date, or
modified by a specific act, etc.
Assignment:
The Jurisdictional Registrar (or those it delegates) of each
adhering country or organization is responsible of the
definition or acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements
(issuing authority and type of legal measure).
Any country or jurisdiction, aiming to adopt this schema,
identifies a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which
shares and defines the structure of the optional part of the
name, according to the organization of the state or
institution. The process of assigning the <local-name> will be
managed by each specific country or jurisdiction under the
related <jurisdiction> element (details on this can be found in
Section 7.2).
Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a
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<jurisdiction> element assigned to the sources of law of a
specific country or organization, and a <local-name> assigned
by the issuing authority. The goal of the LEX schema is to
maintain uniqueness and persistence of all resources identified
by the assigned URNs. The elements values for the LEX
identifier within a jurisdiction are defined by the
Jurisdictional Registrar, this ensures that the constructed
URNs are unique (see Section 7.3 for details on uniqueness).
The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the
institutions that assign and administer them (see Section 7.3
for details on persitence)
Security and Privacy:
This document introduces no additional security considerations
beyond those associated with the use and resolution of URNs in
general.
Interoperability:
As open standard naming convention to identify sources of law
at international level, LEX is meant to guarantee
interoperability among legal information systems across
national boundaries.
The characteristics of the LEX naming convention facilitate
legal document management as well as provide a mechanism of
stable cross-collections and cross-country references, thus
allowing the distribution of the legal information towards a
federated architecture.
Resolution:
The resolution service associates a LEX identifier with a
specific document address on the net. The related system will
have a distributed architecture based on two fundamental
components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System)
and a series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each
competent within a specific domain of the namespace (see
Section 8.1 for more details).
To cope with possible incomplete or inaccurate uniform names,
the implementation of a catalogue, based on a relational-
database, able to associate a URN to related URLs, is
suggested, as it will lead to a higher flexibility in the
resolution process. A resolver can provide names normalization,
completion of inaccurate or incomplete names, and finally their
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resolution in network locations (see Section 8.2 and 8.3 for
characteristics and behaviour of a catalogue for resolution).
Documentation:
None
Additional Information:
See [FRAN] and [SPIN].
Revision Information:
None
3 Specifications of Registration Template
3.1 Identifier structure
The <jurisdiction> element is composed of two specific fields:
jurisdiction = jurisdiction-code *(";" jurisdiction-unit)
where:
<jurisdiction-code> is usually the identification code of the country
where the source of law is issued.
To facilitate the transparency of the name, the <jurisdiction-code>
follows usually the rules of identification of other Internet
applications, based on Domain Name.
Where applicable, the ccTLD, or the TLD, or the Domain Name of the
country or multinational or international organisation is used.
In all the examples in the document, it is assumed that the
corresponding Domain Name is used for the <jurisdiction-code>.
However, a special register for the <jurisdiction-code>, maintained
by IANA, is required, the rules of which are defined in section 11.2.
<jurisdiction-unit> are the possible administrative hierarchical sub-
structures defined by each country or organisation according to its
own legal system. This additional information can be used where two
or more levels of legislative or judicial production exist (e.g.,
federal, state and municipality level) and the same bodies may be
present in each jurisdiction. Then acts of the same type issued by
similar authorities in different areas differ for the jurisdiction-
unit specification. An example can be the following:
"br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government),
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"br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of SU+00E3o Paulo state) and
"br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo: decreto" (decree of Campinas
municipality).
Examples of law sources identifiers are:
urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456 (Italian act)
urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-12-06;321 (French act)
urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123 (Spanish act)
urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 (Glarus Swiss Canton
decree)
urn:lex:eu:commission:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-EU (EU Commission
Directive)
urn:lex:us:federal.supreme.court:decision:1963-03-18;372.us.335 (US
FSC decision)
urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273 (Decision of the
Belgian Council of State)
3.2 Conformance with URN Syntax
To keep backward compatibility with existing applications in some
jurisdictions, the "lex" NID syntax complies with the [RFC2141]
specifications.
3.3 Validation mechanism
The Jurisdictional Registrar (or those it delegates) of each adhering
country or organization is responsible of the definition or
acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authority
and type of legal measure).
3.4 Scope
Global interest.
4 General Syntax and features of the LEX Identifier
This section lists the general features applicable to all
jurisdictions.
4.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters
These characters are defined in accordance with the [RFC2141] "URN
Syntax". For various reasons, later explained, in the "lex" <NSS>
only a sub-set of characters is allowed. All other characters are
either eliminated or converted.
For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please
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see Attachment A.
4.2 Reserved Characters
These characters MUST always and uniquely be used for the assigned
purpose.
The first category includes those characters bearing a specific
meaning in the general creation of the URI (Uniform Resource
Identifier)[RFC3986]:
"%" "/" "?" "#"
The following characters instead are reserved in the specific "lex"
namespace:
- "@" separator of the expression, that contains information on
version and language;
- "$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on
format, editor, etc.;
- ":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity;
- ";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an
element at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a
specification;
- "+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g.,
multiple authorities);
- "," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the
main elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g.,
multiple numbers);
- "~" separator of the partition identifier in references (e.g.,
paragraph of an article);
- "*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions.
4.3 Case sensitivity
Names belonging to the "lex" namespace are case-insensitive. It is
RECOMMENDED that they be created in lower case, but names that differ
only in case MUST be considered to be equivalent.
(e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry").
4.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs
In order to exploit DNS as a routing tool towards the proper
resolution system, to keep editing and communication more simple and
to avoid character percent-encoding, it is strongly RECOMMENDED that
national characters and diacritic signs are turned into base ASCII
characters (e.g., the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" converted into
"sanita", the French term "ministU+00E8re" converted into
"ministere"), in case by transliteration (e.g. "MU+00FCnchen"
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converted into "muenchen").
If such conversion is not acceptable by a specific jurisdiction and
therefore it is used the UTF-8 %-encoding [STD63], it is necessary:
- to convert the non-ASCII characters to IDN encoding, using the
[RFC5894] punycode translation (ex: mU+00FCnchen into xn--mnchen-
3ya), or
- to create a routing service relying to a software, out of DNS,
addressing a proper resolution service.
Summarizing, the preference order is the following:
- Conversion into base ASCII (RECOMMENDED solution);
- Conversion with punycode translation;
- Creation of a routing service relying on a software, out of DNS,
addressing a proper resolution service.
The first two alternatives allow a DNS routing, the third option does
not. However it is up to the specific jurisdiction to choose the
preferred solution.
4.5 Abbreviations
Abbreviations are often used in law for indicating institutions (e.g.
Min.), structures (e.g. Dept.), or legal measures (e.g. Reg.) but not
in a uniform way, therefore their expansion is highly RECOMMENDED.
(e.g., "Min." is reported as "ministry")
4.6 Date Format
Dates are expressed by numbers in the [ISO8601] format:
yyyy-mm-dd
(e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02")
5 Specific Syntax and features of the LEX Identifier
In this section there are other features related to a specific
jurisdiction and the implementation of which is recommended.
5.1 Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks
All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.),
the punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes,
dashes, etc.), when explicitly present, are eliminated (no
transformation occurs in cases of languages with declensions or
agglutinating languages). The words left are connected each other by
a dot (".") which substitutes the "space".
(e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning"
becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning";
"Ministerstvo Finansov" becomes "ministerstvo.finansov")
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5.2 Acronyms
The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in
uniform names (the same acronym may indicate two different
institutions or structures), therefore their expansion is highly
RECOMMENDED.
(e.g., "FAO" is expanded as "food.agriculture.organization")
5.3 Ordinal Numbers
To even the representation, it is highly RECOMMENDED that any ordinal
number included in a component of a document name (e.g., in the
description of an institution body) is indicated in Arabic numerals,
regardless to the original expression: whether in Roman numerals, or
with an adjective, or in Arabic numeral with apex, etc. (IV, third,
1U+00B0, 2^, etc.).
(e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4")
6 Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier
6.1 Basic Principles
The uniform name must identify one and only one document (more
precisely a "bibliographic entity") and is created in such a way that
it is:
- self-explanatory ;
- identifiable through simple and clear rules;
- compatible with the practice commonly used for references;
- able to be created by references in the text, automatically (by
parser) or manually;
- representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of
the document.
6.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation
According to FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records)
model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any
intellectual production, 4 fundamental entities (or aspects) can be
specified.
The first 2 entities reflect its contents:
- work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it
identifies a source of law both in its being (as it has been issued
or proposed) and in its becoming (as it is modified over time);
- expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a
work; in our case it identifies every different (original or up-to-
date) version of the source of law over time and/or language in
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which the text is expressed;
while the other 2 entities relate to its form:
- manifestation: identifies a concrete realisation of an expression;
in our case it identifies realizations in different media
(printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.), or
other publishing characteristics;
- item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case it
identifies individual physical copies as they are found in
particular physical locations.
In this document the FRBR model has been interpreted for the specific
characteristics of the legal domain. In particular, a part from the
language which does produce a specific expression, the discriminative
criterion between expression and manifestation is based on the
difference of the juridical effects that a variation can provide with
respect to the involved actors (citizens, parties, institutions). In
this scenario the main characteristic of the expression of an act is
represented by its validity over the time, during which it provides
the same juridical effects. These effects change for amendments or
annulments of other legislative or jurisprudential acts. Therefore
notes, summarizations, comments, anonymizations and other editorial
activities over the same text do not produce different expressions,
but different manifestations.
6.3 The Structure of the Local Name
The <local-name> within the "lex" namespace MUST contain all the
necessary pieces of information enabling the unequivocal
identification of a legal document.
In the legal domain, at the "work" level, they are essentially four:
the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and the
annex, if any.
It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is:
- the original version and all the amended versions of the same
document;
- the versions of the text expressed in the different official
languages of the state or organization.
Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse
manifestations, which may be produced in multiple locations using
different means and formats.
In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work)
remains the same, but information is added regarding the specific
version under consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added
to the expression for representing the characteristics of the
publication (manifestation).
The information which forms a source of law uniform name at each
level (work, expression, manifestation) is expressed in the official
language of the related jurisdiction; in case of more official
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languages (as in Switzerland) or more involved jurisdictions (as in
international treaties), more language-dependent names (aliases) are
created.
Therefore, the more general structure of the local name appears as
follows:
local-name = work ["@" expression] ["$" manifestation]
However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of
the main original provision (work) becomes the identifier of an
entire class of documents which includes: the original main document,
the annexes, and all their versions, languages and formats
subsequently generated.
6.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level
The structure of the document identifier is made of the four
fundamental elements mentioned above, clearly distinguished one from
the other in accordance with an order identifying increasingly narrow
domains and competences:
work = authority ":" measure ":" details *(":" annex)
where:
<authority> is the issuing or proposing authority of the measure
(e.g., State, Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.);
<measure> is the type of the measure, both public nature (e.g.,
constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) as
well as private one (e.g., license, agreement, etc);
<details> are the terms associated to the measure, typically the date
(usually the signature date) and the number included in the heading
of the act;
<annex> is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1).
In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their
own uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the
identifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document.
In similar way the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending
to that of the annex which it is attached to.
The main elements of the work name are generally divided into several
elementary components, and, for each, specific rules of
representation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and
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order).
For the details regarding each element, please see the Attachment B.
Examples of <work> identifiers are:
urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22
urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45
urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963
urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68
urn:lex:fr:assemblee.nationale:proposition.loi:13.legislature;1762
urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1
urn:lex:fsf.org:free.software.foundation:general.public.license:2007-
06-29;lex-1
urn:lex:nl:hoge.raad:besluit:2008-04-01;bc8581
It is worth to note that the type of measure is important to identify
case law, as well as legislation, especially within the legal systems
where cases, by tradition, are identified only through the year of
release and a number. Since the aim of the "urn:lex" schema is to
identify specific materials, the type of measure or the full date are
able to provide discrimination between materials belonging to a
specific case.
Here below is an example where the type of measure or the full date
are essential for identify specific materials of a case:
- 4/59 Judgment of the EEC Court of Justice 04/04/1960, Mannesmann AG
and others / ECSC High Authority
urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:judgment:1960-04-04;4-59
- 4/59 Order of the EEC Court of Justice 18/05/1960, Mannesmann AG
and others / ECSC High Authority
urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:order:1960-05-18;4-59
6.5 Aliases
International treaties involve more jurisdictions (the signing ones)
so they are represented through more identifiers, each of them
related to an involved jurisdiction. For example, a bilateral France
and Germany treaty is identified through two URNs (aliases) belonging
to either "fr" or "de" jurisdiction
(e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and
"urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:...")
since it pertains to both the French and the German jurisdiction.
In the states or organisations that have more than one official
language, a document has more identifiers, each of them expressed in
a different official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases.
This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniform
name of the referred source of law in the same language used in the
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document itself.
(e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31",
"urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.)
Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in
order to facilitate its linking to other documents. This option can
be used for documents that, although unique, are commonly referenced
from different perspectives. For example, the form of a document's
promulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated
through a Decree of the President of the Republic).
6.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level
There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to
specific versions or languages.
Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that
text is to be considered as the valid text (in force or effective).
The lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent
version.
New versions of a text may be brought into existence by:
- changes in the text (amendments) due to the issuing of other legal
acts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidated
texts;
- correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige);
- entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on
the specific date in which different partitions of a text come into
force.
Each of such versions may be expressed in more than one language,
with each language-version having its own specific identifier.
The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to
the work identifier, using the following main structure:
expression = version [":" language]
where:
<version> is the identifier of the version of the (original or
amended) source of law. In general it is expressed by the
promulgation date of the amending act; anyway other specific
information can be used for particular documents. If necessary, the
original version is specified by the string "original" (for the
details regarding this element, please see the Attachment C);
<language> is the identification code of the language in which the
document is expressed, according to [BCP47] (it=Italian, fr=French,
de=German, etc.). The granularity level of the language (for example
the specification of the German language as used in Switzerland
rather than the standard German) is left to each specific
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jurisdiction. The information is not necessary when the text is
expressed in the unique official language of the country or
jurisdiction.
Examples of document identifiers for expressions are:
urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr (original version in
French)
urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de (original version
in German)
urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr (amended version in
French)
urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de (amended version
in German)
urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273@originel:fr
(original version in French of a Belgian decision)
6.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation Level
To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the
expression is followed by a suitable suffix describing the:
- digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed according to
the MIME Content-Type standard [RFC2045], where the "/" character
is to be substituted by the "-" sign;
- editorial staff who produced it, expressed according to its
Internet domain name;
- possible components of the expressions contained in the
manifestation. Such components are expressed by language-dependent
labels representing the whole document (in English "all") or the
main part of the document (in English "body") or the caption label
of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2, etc.);
- other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision text).
The <manifestation> suffix will thus read:
manifestation = format *(";" specification)
":" editor *(";" specification)
[":" component *(";" specification)]
[":" feature *(";" specification)]
To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each main element of
the manifestation MAY be followed by further specifications, for
example as regards <format> the version, for <editor> the archive
name and the electronic publisher, etc.
(examples:
the original version the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might have
the following manifestations with their relative uniform names:
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- PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Italian
Parliament:
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-
pdf;1.7:parlamento.it"
- XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF
format (version 1.7) of the "Figura 1" (figure 1) contained in the
body, edited by the Italian Senate:
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir-
2.2:senato.it:testo"
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-
pdf;1.7:senato.it:figura.1"
the Spanish URN of the html format of the whole Judgement of the
European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 11/06/2009, in Spanish version,
published in the Jurifast data base in anonymized form:
"urn:lex:eu:tibunal.justicia:sentencia:2009-06-11;33-
08@original:es$text-html:juradmin.eu;jurifast:todo:anonimo")
Furthermore, it is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a
manifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are
involved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in
their own right (e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts
recorded in non-textual formats, such as image scans of documents.
In these ways, a LEX name permits:
- exploitation of all the advantages of an unequivocal identifier
that is independent of physical location;
- a means to provide choice among different existing manifestations
(e.g. XML or PDF formats, resolution degree of an image etc.) of
the same expression.
6.8 Sources of Law References
References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of
the act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document.
An act partition is a logical subdivision of the text, that, in a
structured format (as XML) fitting the document logical structure, is
represented by an element with its own ID; this ID aims to identify
the element and to locate it. In a mark-up that does not fit the
logical structure of the text (as HTML), generally only the starting
point of the partition, and not the element, is identified through a
label (a <a name> tag).
Therefore, for allowing browsers to point to a specific partition, it
is necessary that such partition is endowed with an unequivocal label
or ID within the including document and its value is the same
independently from the document format.
For enabling the construction of the partition identifier between
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different collections of documents, specific construction rules for
IDs or labels SHOULD be defined and shared, within each country or
jurisdiction, for any document type (e.g., for legislation, the
paragraph 2 of the article 3 might have as label or ID the value
"art3;par2", similarly for case-law, paragraph 22 of the judgment in
Case 46/76 Bauhuis v Netherlands, might have as label or ID the value
"par22").
Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility with
applications able to manage this information (e.g., returning the
proper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the case
of rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc.
For this purpose it is necessary that the partition identifier is
transmitted to the servers (resolution and application) and therefore
it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment,
which is not transmitted to the server.
According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is:
URN-reference = URN-document ["~" partition-id]
(e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French
Act of 15 may 2004, n. 106, the reference is written
"urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15;par3").
Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the
partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to
the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for
example, out of a database), if it is possible, only the referred
partition, otherwise to return the whole act.
Anyway, to make it effective pointing to the indicated partition
through a browser, the resolver SHOULD transform the partition ID of
each returned URL in a URI fragment; this is obtained appending to
URL the "#" character followed by the partition ID (in the example
above, the returned URL will be <URL-document>#art15;par3).
Anyway it is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in this
case only the URN document component of the reference is transmitted
to the resolver, therefore the whole document will be always
retrieved.
7 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment
7.1 Specifying the <jurisdiction> element of the LEX identifier
Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization
is assigned with a jurisdiction code, which characterizes the URNs of
the source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code is
assigned according to ccTLD (as well as TLDN or DN for the
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organizations) representation and it is the value of the
<jurisdiction-code> element, which preserves cross-country uniqueness
of the identifiers.
7.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment
Any country or jurisdiction, who intends to adopt this schema,
identifies a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which shares
and defines the structure of the optional part (<jurisdiction-unit>)
of the name, according to the organization of the state or
institution. For example, in a federal state a <jurisdiction-unit>
corresponding to the name of each member state (e.g. "br;sao.paolo",
"br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined.
The process of assigning the <local-name> will be managed by each
specific country or jurisdiction under the related <jurisdiction>
element.
In any country the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the
assignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of
legal measure) of the local names considering the characteristics of
its own state or institution organization.
Such a Registrar MUST establish, according to the guidelines
indicated in the current document, a uniform procedure within the
country or organization to define <local-name> elements, to take
decisions upon normalizations and finally to solve and avoid possible
name collisions as well as to maintain authoritative registries of
various kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). In
particular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structure
and naming of government entities are important to semantically-aware
applications in this domain.
Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct
partition IDs for each document type.
Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the
guidelines for the <local-name> construction as well as the
predefined values and codes.
7.3 Identifier Uniqueness
Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a
<jurisdiction> element assigned to the sources of law of a specific
country or organization, and a <local-name> assigned by the issuing
authority. The main elements (authority and type of measure) of the
<local-name> are defined by the Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it
is ensured that the constructed URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional
Registrar SHOULD provide clear documentation of rules by which names
are to be constructed, and SHOULD update and make accessible its
registries.
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Any issuing authority is responsible to define formal parameters to
guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a
conventional internal number, which, combined with the other <local-
name> components (authority, measure and date), builds an unequivocal
identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue
of previously assigned names.
7.4 Identifier persistence considerations
The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the
institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the LEX
schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all resources
identified by the assigned URNs.
In particular, ITTIG-CNR, as proposer, is responsible of maintaining
the uniqueness of the <jurisdiction> element; given that the
<jurisdiction> is assigned on the basis of the long-held ccTLD
representation of the country (or the TLDN or DN of the organization)
and that the country or organization associated code is expected to
continue indefinitely, the URN also persists indefinitely.
The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate
the responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which
is identified within each country or organization.
Therefore, each authority is responsible for assigning URNs which
have a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique
for the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations,
as well as diverse local forms of government organization, will
result in different methods of assigning responsibility for different
levels of the name.
Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an
authoritative hierarchy, it can and SHOULD be done by creating
consensus around a series of published rules for the creation and
administration of names by institutions and bodies that operate by
means of collaboration rather than compulsion.
Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging
from the national down to the very local, MUST equally take
responsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their
scope.
8 Principles of the Resolution Service
8.1 The General Architecture of the System
The task of the resolution service is that of associating a LEX
identifier with a specific document address on the network. By
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contrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and
enforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" namespace
resolver will be expected to cope with a wide variety of "dirty"
inputs, particularly those created by the automated extraction of
references from incomplete or inaccurate texts. In this document,
the result is a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolver
design.
The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental
components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a
series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent
within a specific domain of the namespace.
Through the NAPTR records of the DNS (described in [RFC3403]), the
client identifies the characteristics (protocol, port, site) of the
service (e.g. according to [RFC2169]) capable of associating the
relative URLs with the URN in question, thereby allowing access to
the document.
A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of
hierarchically-dependent portions of the name.
Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld
provided that the processes for their resolution and management are
robust and are followed.
For the "lex" namespace, ITTIG-CNR will maintain the root zone
"lex.urn.arpa" and, in correspondence with the adhesion of a new
country (e.g., "br") or organization, will update the DNS information
with a new record to delegate the relative resolution. This may be
obtained by a regular expression that matches the initial part of the
URN (e.g., "urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g.,
"lex.senado.gov.br").
Likewise the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniform
names (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root
in the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the
resolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform
names. In similar way it can delegate the resolution of
country/organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo")
towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br").
Such DNS routing chain does not work for all the URN components
containing %-encoded characters. Therefore in these cases a proper
software implementing routing service has to be developed.
The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base
(consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a
software to query the knowledge base itself.
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8.2 Catalogues for Resolution
Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations,
and incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document
are thus likely to be built from textual references (this is even
more frequent if they are created automatically through a specific
parser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based on
a relational-database, is suggested, as it will lead to a higher
flexibility in the resolution process.
In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various
versions and languages of the same source of law as well as the
related manifestations.
It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own
catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each
resource.
8.3 Suggested resolver behaviour
First of all the resolver should separate the part corresponding to
the partition ID, through the "~" separator, from the document name.
So, the resolution process SHOULD implement a normalization of the
uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some
components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms,
expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names,
standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function
authorities and types of measure registers are useful.
The resolver SHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URN
which corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary).
Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or
incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial
matches) is indicated. It is worth remarking that incomplete
references (not including all the elements to create the canonical
uniform name) are normal and natural; for a human reader, the
reference would be "completed" by contextual understanding of the
reference in the document in which it occurs.
In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID information
to retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition,
otherwise to return of the entire document.
Lacking more specific indications, the resolver SHOULD select the
best (most recent) version of the requested source of law, and
provide all the manifestations with their related items.
A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will,
of course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any
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suggested expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date,
language, format, etc.).
Finally, the resolver SHOULD append to URLs the "#" character
followed by partition ID, transforming it in a URI fragment for
browser pointing.
9 Namespace Considerations
In collaboration with the legislative XML community, registrants
carried out a preliminary study of the URI alternatives to satisfy
the key requirements.
The options analysed were: a private URI scheme, URL, PURL and URN.
URN was considered the most appropriate URI given the requirements
analysis.
Advantages we would emphasize are:
- greater flexibility in building the identifier;
- the capacity to represent name components that are not strictly
hierarchical;
- the potential for clear division of the identifier into macro
parts, main elements and components, using different separators;
- ease of managing optional parts of a name.
10 Community Considerations
The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of
information systems used in the Public Administration at the national
and international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the
legal information towards a federated architecture. In such an
architecture, documents are directly managed by the issuing
authorities, with resulting benefits in information authenticity,
quality and currency. A shared identification mechanism resources
guarantees that a distributed system will be as efficient and
effective as a comparable centralized system.
Creators of Internet content that references legal materials -
including publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of
legal publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace
because facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by manual
or automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining documents
that contain such references.
Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will
be entitled to access the namespace and its associated application,
registers, and resolution services, to facilitate document access.
11 IANA Considerations
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11.1 NID Registration
This document includes a URN NID registration for "lex" for entry in
the IANA registry of URN NIDs (see [RFC8141]), as well as the
registration of the following NAPTRs record:
in the URN.ARPA domain:
lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" lex.ittig.cnr.it.
in the URN.URI.ARPA domain:
lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" lex.ittig.cnr.it.
11.2 Jurisdiction-code Registratio
IANA is requested to create a new registry for <jurisdiction-code>.
The registration policy is "Expert Review" as specified in [RFC8126].
Designated Expert(s) will assign jurisdiction codes based on the
following principles:
- if a request comes from a jurisdiction that corresponds to a
country and the jurisdiction code is the same as a top level ccTLD,
which is not yet registered, then the top level ccTLD should be
used as the jurisdiction code;
- if a request comes from a jurisdiction that corresponds to a multi-
national (e.g., European Union) or international (e.g., United
Nations, Free Software Foundation) organizations the Top Level
Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain Name (e.g., "un.org",
"wto.int") of the organization should be used as the jurisdiction
code;
- in case when such multi-national or international organization does
not have a registered domain, Designated Expert should assign
something like <name>.lex, where <name> is the English acronym of
the organization name. For example, the jurisdiction code of the
European Economic Community is "eec.lex".
Jurisdiction codes can't be renamed, because allowing for renames
would violate rules that URN assignments are persistent.
Jurisdiction codes can never be deleted. They can only be marked as
"obsolete", i.e. closed for new assignments within the jurisdiction.
Requests to obsolete a jurisdiction code are also processed by
Designated Expert.
Designated Expert can unilaterally initiate allocation or obsoletion
of a jurisdiction code.
Request for new jurisdiction code assignment must include
Organization or Country requesting it and Contact information (email)
of who requested the assignment.
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12 References
12.1 Normative References
[BCP47] A. Phillips, M. Davis, "Tags for Identifying Languages",
BCP 47, RFC 5646, September 2009
[STD63] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.
[RFC2045] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.
[RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2141] R. Moats, K. R. Sollins, "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May
1997.
[RFC2169] R. Daniel, "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN",
RFC 2169, June 1997
[RFC3403] M. Mealling, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS),
Part Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database, RFC
3403, October 2002.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC
3986, January 2005.
[RFC5234] D. Crocker Ed., P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008
[RFC5894] J. Klensin, "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Background, Explanation, and
Rationale", RFC 5894, August 2010
[RFC5988] M. Nottingham, "Web Linking", RFC 5988, October 2010
[RFC8126] M. Cotton, B. Leiba, T. Narten, "Guidelines for Writing
an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", RFC 8126, June
2017
[RFC8141] P. Saint-Andre, J.C. Klensin, "Uniform Resource Names
(URNs)", RFC 8141, April 2017
[ISO8601] ISO 8601, "Data elements and interchange formats", ISO
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8601:2004
12.2 Informative References
[FRAN] E. Francesconi, "Technologies for European Integration.
Standards-based Interoperability of Legal Information
Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-3, European Press Academic
Publishing, 2007.
[SPIN] P.L. Spinosa, "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian
Legal Documents", URN-NIR 1.4, June, 2010, ITTIG
Technical Report n. 8/2010.
13 Acknowledgments
The authors of this document wish to thank all the supporters for
giving suggestions and comments.
They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community for the
interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group
"Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian
NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [SPIN].
The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the
Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for
his contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful
discussions which greatly improved the final draft. The authors wish
to specially thank Marc van Opijnen (Dutch Ministry of Security and
Justice) for his valuable comments on LEX specifications which
contributed to improve the final result, as well as for the common
work aimed to harmonize ECLI and LEX standards. Thanks also to Joao
Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system analyst of the Brazilian
Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, information management
consultant, for their detailed comments on the first drafts of this
document, which provided significant hints to the final version of
the standard, and to Robert Richards of the Legal Information
Institute (Cornell University Law School), promoter and maintainer of
the Legal Informatics Research social network, as well as to the
members of this network, for their valuable comments on this
proposal.
Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly
contributed to the first drafting of this document.
14 Author's Addresses
PierLuigi Spinosa
(ICT consultant)
Via Zanardelli, 15
50136 Firenze
Italy
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Telephone: +39 339 5614056
e-mail: pierluigi.spinosa@gmail.com
Enrico Francesconi
Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG)
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Via de' Barucci, 20
50127 Firenze
Italy
Telephone: +39 055 43995
e-mail: enrico.francesconi@ittig.cnr.it
Caterina Lupo
(ICT consultant)
Via San Fabiano, 25
00165 Roma
Italy
Telephone: +39 3382632348
e-mail: caterina.lupo@gmail.com
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Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of the "lex"
namespace
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* General Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN)
* NID = namespace
* NSS = specific name
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
URN = "urn:" NID ":" NSS
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) of the "lex" namespace
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
NID = "lex"
URN = "urn:lex:" NSS-lex
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of a "lex" specific name
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
NSS-lex = jurisdiction ":" local-name
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <jurisdiction> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
jurisdiction = jurisdiction-code *(";" jurisdiction-unit)
jurisdiction-code = 2*4lowercase / (alfanum *normal)
jurisdiction-unit = alfanum *normal
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <local-name> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
local-name = work ["@" expression] ["$" manifestation]
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <work> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
work = authority ":" measure ":" details *(":" annex)
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <authority> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
authority = issuer *("+" issuer)
issuer = (institution *(";" body) *(";" function)) / office
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institution = alfanum *normal
body = alfanum *normal
function = alfanum *normal
office = alfanum *normal
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <measure> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
measure = measure-type *(";" specification)
measure-type = alfanum *normal
specification = alfanum *normal
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <details> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
details = (dates / period) ";" numbers
dates = date *("," date)
period = alfanum *normal
numbers = (document-id *("," document-id)) / number-lex
document-id = alfanum *(normal / other)
number-lex = "lex-" 1*DIGIT
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <annex> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
annex = annex-id *(";" specification)
annex-id = alfanum *normal
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <expression> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
expression = version [":" language]
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <version> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
version = (amendment-date / specification)
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*(";" (event-date / event))
amendment-date = date
event-date = date
event = alfanum *normal
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <language> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
language = 2*3lowercase
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the <manifestation> element
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
manifestation = format *(";" specification)
":" editor *(";" specification)
[":" component *(";" specification)]
[":" feature *(";" specification)]
format = alfanum *(normal / "-")
editor = alfanum *(normal / "-")
component = alfanum *(normal / "-")
feature = alfanum *(normal / "-")
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Structure of the date
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
date = year "-" month "-" day
year = 4DIGIT
month = 2DIGIT
day = 2DIGIT
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Allowed characters
*-------------------------------------------------------------------
allowed-lex = normal / other / reserved / future
normal = alfanum / "."
alfanum = lowercase / uppercase / DIGIT / encoded
lowercase = %x61-7A ; lower-case ASCII letters (a-z)
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uppercase = %x41-5A ; upper-case ASCII letters (A-Z)
DIGIT = %x30-39 ; decimal digits (0-9)
encoded = 1*4 ("%" 2HEXDIG )
HEXDIG = DIGIT / %x41-46 / %x61-66 ; hex digits (0-9,A-F,a-f)
other = "-" / "_" / "'" / "=" / "(" / ")"
reserved = ":" / "@" / "$" / "+" / ";" / "," / "~"
future = "*" / "!"
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Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level
B1 The <authority> element
B1.1 Indication of the Authority
The <authority> element of a uniform name may indicate, in the
various cases:
- the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More
specifically, the authority adopting the provision or enacting it;
- the institution where the provision is registered, known and
referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills
identified through the reference to the Chamber where they are
presented);
- the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the
legal provision even when this is issued by another authority
(e.g., the statute of a Body);
- the entity that proposed the legal material not yet included in the
institutional process (e.g. a proposed bill written by a a
political party).
B1.2 Multiple Issuers
Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g.,
inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the
<authority> element contains all the issuing parties (properly
separated), as follows:
authority = issuer *("+" issuer)
(e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances")
B1.3 Indication of the Issuer
Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an
institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g.,
Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance
with the institution's hierarchical structure, from the more general
to more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the
relative office (President, Director, etc.).
Therefore, the structure of the issuer is as follows:
issuer = (institution *(";" body) *(";" function)) / office
(e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager")
B1.4 Indication of the Body
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Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing
authority is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional
Acts) and normally it is not indicated in the references.
Just like in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is
limited to the minimum in relation to the type of measure.
(e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act")
B1.5 Indication of the Function
Generally, the component <function> is indicated, sometimes instead
of the body itself:
- in case of political, representative or elective offices
(e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of
"university.oxford;rectorship:decree");
- when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general
manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to
associate a specific internal institutional structure to
(e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager").
It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in
charge of an institution (typically, a general director); in this
case, only the structure and not the person in charge is indicated
(e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration").
The function MUST be indicated when:
- it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the
structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy
director, etc.);
- the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the
indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity.
B1.6 Conventions for the Authority
Acts and measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or
enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally
indicated "state" (expressed in each country official language) as
authority; the same convention is used for constitutions, codes
(civil, criminal, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc) and
international treaties.
B2 The <measure> element
B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure
In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory.
This makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the
measure (e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even
if it is widely used.
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When the authority-measure combination clearly identifies a specific
document, the type of measure is not defined through attributes
referring to the enacting authority.
(e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act")
B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure
In the <measure> element, it is usually sufficient to indicate the
type of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather
than through the formal details (date and number), may be made
through some of their characteristics such as the subject-matter
covered (e.g., accounting regulations), nicknames referring to the
promoter (e.g., Bassanini Act) or to the topic of the act (e.g.,
Bankruptcy Law), etc..
In these cases, the type of measure MAY be followed by further
specifications useful in referencing even if the details are lacking:
measure = measure-type *(";" specification)
(e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy")
B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References
There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually
cited in different ways, for example through the legislative act
introducing them into the legal order (President's decree,
legislative decree, etc.) or through their legislative category
(regulations, consolidation, etc.).
In order to ensure, in all the cases, the validity of the references,
an alias that takes into account the measure category is associated
to the uniform name, representing the legislative form.
(e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and
"state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358").
B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases
The sources of law including different normative references are
usually introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing
of an act, which they are either included or attached to. It is,
therefore, necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of
the same document. Specifically, the different measures can be:
- adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by
the provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the
correlation is established between two uniform names each featuring
a completely different <authority> element
(e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and
"ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic.
planning:decree");
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- issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing
authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers to
the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two aliases
share the first part of the authority;
(e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and
"municipality.firenze;council:deliberation");
- issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own
competence; in this case the <authority> element is the same
(e.g., "ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools.
telematic.process" and "ministry.justice:decree").
B3 The <details> element
B3.1 Indication of the Details
The details of a source of law usually include the date of the
enactment and the identification number (inclusion in the body of
laws, register, protocol, etc.).
Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which
the number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a
measure has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these
reasons, the set up of both elements (date and number) includes
multiple values.
Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents
through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number)
rather than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and
never used in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV
legislature). In these cases, the component <period> is used in
substitution of the component <dates>.
Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific
sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform
name, which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date-
number has the following form:
details = (dates / period) ";" numbers
(e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislature;s.2544")
B3.2 Multiple Dates
Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one
date; in this case, in the field <dates> all the given dates are to
be reported and indicated as follows:
dates = date *("," date)
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(e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30,
1999- January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name:
"personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13;
1-p-2000").
B3.3 Unnumbered Measures
Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non-
unequivolcal identifier, because several measures of the same type
can exist, issued on the same day by the same authority.
To ensure that the uniform name is unambiguous, the <numbers> field
MUST, in any case, contain a discriminating element, which can be any
identifier used internally, and not published, by the authority
(e.g., protocol).
If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier
MUST be created for the name system. In order to easily differentiate
it, such number is preceded by the string "lex-":
number-lex = "lex-" 1*DIGIT
(e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3")
It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a
discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities,
only one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to
the document (e.g., the proponent).
The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g.,
the Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are
recognized by the univocal identifying label printed on the paper.
Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in
an official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear
advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found.
B3.4 Multiple Numbers
Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by
a set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills).
In this case, in the <numbers> field, all the identifiers are
reported, according to the following structure:
numbers = document-id *("," document-id)
(e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97")
The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g.,
":"), including the comma, cannot exist inside the <document-id>, and
therefore MUST be turned into "-".
This conversion may imply that the uniform name of the document is no
more unique (e.g., removal 123-BIS and return 123/BIS of the bill 123
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both are identified as "123-bis"); in this case, it is necessary to
add a specific distinctive ending (e.g., "123-bis-removal" and "123-
bis-return").
B4 The <annex> element
B4.1 Formal Annexes
Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may
be referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to
which they are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the
main document as well as each formal individual annex is univocally
identified.
Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a
legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In any
case, they MUST be given a uniform name, which includes the uniform
name of the source of law to which they are attached, and a suffix
which identifies the annex itself.
The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the
annex and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which
will facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is
missing:
annex = annex-id *(";" specification)
(e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;
borders.park")
The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved
(e.g. ":") must not be featured in the <annex-id> and therefore MUST
be turned into ".".
B4.2 Annexes of Annexes
When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers
are created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those
of the annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it).
(e.g., Table 1 attached to Attachment A of the preceding legal act
has the following uniform name:
"region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;
borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories").
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Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the <version> Element of the
Expression
C1 The <version> element
C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document
The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the
following forms:
- "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the modified
parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts) and their
related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside one single
object (e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be able, in a
dynamic way, to appear in different forms according to the
requested date of effectiveness.
In this document type, usually a set of metadata contains the
lifecycle of the document (from the original to the last
modification), including the validity time interval of each version
and of each related text portion;
- "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object
is created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each
object is, therefore, characterized by its own period of validity.
In any case all the versions SHOULD be linked one another and
immediately navigable.
In a "multi-version" document each time interval should have a link
to the related in-force document version obtained by displaying in a
different way the very same document.
In a "single-version" document, the metadata should contain links to
the all the previous modifications and a link only to the following
version, if any.
[RFC5988] can be used as reference to establish links between
different document versions, either in the "multi-version" or in the
"single-version" document. According to [RFC5988] the following
relations are useful:
- current (or last or last-version): in-force version
- self: this version
- next: next version
- previous: previous version
- first: original version
It is RECOMMENDED that these relations are inserted in the header of
each version (if "single-version") or associated to each entry
containing a single URN (if "multi-version").
C1.2 Identification of the Version
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In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to
the uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific
suffix.
Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and
includes, first and foremost, one of the following elements:
- the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account;
- the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the
errata corrige, is published;
- a specification which must identify the reason concerning the
amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process),
for the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills).
Anyway it is possible to add further specifications that will
distinguish each of the different versions of the text to guarantee
identifier unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the
in-force or effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text
itself (e.g., when the amendments introduced by an act are applied at
different times) or different events occurring in the same date.
version = (amendment-date / specification)
*(";" (event-date / event))
where:
- <amendment-date> contains the issuing date of the last considered
amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the
original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is
effective and the information system produces one version for each
of them, such element contains the string "original";
- <specification> any information useful to identify unambiguously
and univocally the version;
- <event-date> contains the date in which a version is put into
force, is effective or is published;
- <event> is a name assigned to the event producing a further version
(e.g., amendment, decision, etc.).
The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a
version because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data).
(e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19"
identifies the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No.
12" with the amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998,
No. 51", without any indication of its actual entry into force. The
same uniform name with the additional ending ";1999-01-01" indicates
the in-force or effective version starting in a different date (from
1/1/99).
For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the
effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a
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new uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the
identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case
of a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate
every uniform name with the period of time during which such a name
together with its corresponding text is to be considered valid.
(e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941,
no. 12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of
02/19/1998, no. 51", contains the name of the original
"state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12" as well as the name of the updated
version "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19").
Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a
new version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the
creation of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order
to guarantee their alignment (i.e., the main document, the
attachments and annexes).
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Attachment D -- Http-based LEX identifier
D1 Http-based URI
Http-based URIs have been recently promoted as stable and location-
independent identifiers [RFC3986]. According to this syntax, at all
levels, resource IDs belong to the http scheme and are normally
resolved using mechanisms widely available in browsers and web
servers.
Such kind of identifiers have been recently suggested also within the
set of principles and technologies, known as "Linked Data" as a basic
infrastructure of the semantic web to enable data sharing and reuse
on a massive scale.
Such principles, introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in his Web
architecture note "Linked Data"
(http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html), are synthetically:
- Use URIs as names for things;
- Use HTTP URIs, so that people can look up those names;
- When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the
standards (RDF, SPARQL);
- Include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more
things.
The second principle is the one more affecting a discussion about the
scheme to be used for legal resources identification; in particular
to the aim of guaranteeing the access to the resources, http-based
identifiers are suggested. This property is addressed as
"dereferenceability", meaning a resource retrieval mechanism using
any of the Internet protocols, e.g. HTTP, so that HTTP clients, for
instance, can look up the URI using the HTTP protocol and retrieve a
description of the resource that is identified by the URI.
Such property is available for http-based identifiers either with or
without a resolver allowing a 1-to-1 association with the "best copy"
of the resource; in the legal domain it is related to the unique act
manifestation of a specific publisher and format.
The same property holds for URN identifiers, as long as a resolver is
properly set-up, allowing 1-to-N association with more manifestations
of a resource (act).
Therefore an http-based identifier, stable and independent from the
resource location, can be effectively used when a single publisher
provides a specific item of this resource (1-to-1 mapping between an
identifier and manifestation of an act). The independence from the
resource location is managed by a "303 Redirect" status code (see
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http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/#htoc11) which may require a
resolver able to access the physical location of the resource (e.g.,
through submitting a query to a database). A URN identifier, stable
and independent form the resource location, can be effectively used
within a federative environment where different publishers can
provide different items of the same act (1-to-N mapping between an
identifier and different manifestations of an act).
In order to comply with the Linked Data principles and to build http-
based identifiers using the LEX namespace specifications, the LEX
schema and metadata set can be serialized according to an http URI
syntax. It is worthwhile to mention that URN focuses on identifying
an act, while Linked Data principles focus on identifying a resource
on the Web.
In the following sections the http-based serialization of the urn LEX
schema is reported.
D2 The http-based LEX identifier structure
The http-based hierarchical structure of the LEX identifier is the
following:
"http://" host-name "/lex/" jurisdiction "/" local-name
where:
- <host-name> represents the name of the organization server
publishing the resource;
- "lex" is the equivalent of the URN namespace ID and provides the
reference to the naming convention adopted;
- <jurisdiction> and <local-name> share meaning and syntax of the
corresponding components in the LEX specifications.
The <jurisdiction> element follows the syntax rules of the
corresponding element in the URN specification, therefore it has the
following structure:
jurisdiction = jurisdiction-code *(";" jurisdiction-unit)
The character ";" still separates the identification code of the
country or jurisdiction where the source of law is issued
(<jurisdiction-code>) from any possible administrative hierarchical
sub-structures defined by each country or organisation according to
its own legal system.
The <local-name> follows the FRBR model as implemented by the LEX
specifications, therefore its http-based structure is the following:
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local-name = work "/@/" expression "/$/" manifestation
D3 The http-based LEX identifier at Work Level
According to the corresponding level of the URN version, the http-
based LEX identifier structure at work level is the following:
work = authority "/" measure "/" details *("/" annex)
The elements <authority>, <measure> and <annex> follow the same
syntax rules of the corresponding elements in the URN specification.
Examples of http-based identifiers at <work> level, corresponding to
the urn-based examples in Section 6.4, are the following:
http://<host-name>/lex/it/stato/legge/2006-05-14;22
http://<host-name>/lex/uk/ministry.justice/decree/1999-10-07;45
http://<host-name>/lex/ch;glarus/regiere/erlass/2007-10-15;963
http://<host-name>/lex/es/tribunal.supremo/decision/2001-09-28;68
http://<host-name>/lex/fr/assemblee.nationale/proposition.loi/
13.legislature;1762
http://<host-name>/lex/br/estado/constituicao/1988-10-05;lex-1
http://<host-name>/lex/fsf.org/free.software.foundation/
general.public.license/2007-06-29;lex-1
http://<host-name>/lex/nl/hoge.raad/besluit/2008-04-01;bc8581
D4 The http-based LEX identifier at Expression Level
According to the corresponding level of the URN version, the http-
based LEX structure at expression level is the following:
expression = version ["/" language]
The elements <version> and <annex> follow the same syntax rules of
the corresponding elements in the URN specification.
Examples of http-based identifiers at expression level, corresponding
to the urn-based examples in Section 6.6, are the following:
http://<host-name>/lex/ch/etat/loi/2006-05-14;22/@/originel/fr
(original version in French)
http://<host-name>/lex/ch/staat/gesetz/2006-05-14;22/@/original/de
(original version in German)
http://<host-name>/lex/ch/etat/loi/2006-05-14;22/@/2008-03-12/fr
(amended version in French)
http://<host-name>/lex/ch/staat/gesetz/2006-05-14;22/@/2008-03-12/de
(amended version in German)
http://<host-name>/lex/be/conseil.etat/decision/2008-07-09;185.273
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/@/originel/fr
(original version in French of a Belgian decision)
D5 The http-based LEX identifier at Manifestation Level
Information provided in the URN version at manifestation level is
differently accommodated in the corresponding level of the http-based
LEX identifier.
The <editor> element, reported at manifestation level in the urn-
based LEX version, is an information already contained in the <host-
name> of the http-based LEX identifier, therefore it is omitted in
the <manifestation> elements.
Similarly the <feature> element is omitted since it loses its meaning
which would derived from the comparison between different
manifestations.
The <format> element is reported as unique extension of the data
format in which the manifestation is drafted. The value is compliant
with the registered file extensions, thus it can be "pdf" for PDF,
"doc" for MS Word, "xml" for XML documents, "tif" for tiff image
format, etc.
Therefore the http-based LEX structure at manifestation level is the
following:
manifestation = [ component *(";" specification)] "." format
The element <component> follows the same syntax rules of the
corresponding element in the URN specification.
Examples of http-based identifiers at manifestation level,
corresponding to the urn-based examples in Section 6.7 are the
following:
http://www.senato.it/lex/it/stato/legge/2000-04-03;56/$/testo.xml
(body of the Italian law 3 April 2000, n. 56, published by the
Italian Senate in xml format)
http://www.senato.it/lex/it/stato/legge/2000-04-03;56/$/figura.1.pdf
(Figure 1 in PDF format of the Italian law 3 April 2000, n. 56,
published by the Italian Senate)
http://www.juradmin.eu/jurifast/lex/eu/tibunal.justicia/sentencia/
2009-06-11;33-08/@/original/es/$/todo.html
(the Spanish http-based LEX identifier of the html format of the
whole Judgement of the European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of
11/06/2009, in Spanish version, published by the Juriadmin site in
the Jurifast data base)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/lex/eu/commission/directive/
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2010-03-09;2010-19-EU/$/body.xml
(body of the EU Directive n. 2010-19-EU, dated 2010-03-09, in its
XML format published by Eur-Lex)
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Html markup produced by rfcmarkup 1.123, available from
https://tools.ietf.org/tools/rfcmarkup/