Essays on the Visualisation of Legal Informatics

Both legal scholars and computer scientists will be curious to know how the gap between law and computing can be bridged.

The law, and also jurisprudence, is based on language, and is mainly textual. Every syntactic system has its semantic range, and so does language, which in law achieves a high degree of professional precision. The use of visualisations is a syntactic supplement and opens up a new understanding of legal forms. This understanding was reinforced by the paradigm shift from textual law to legal informatics, in which visual formal notations are decisive. The authors have been dealing with visualisation approaches for a long time and summarise them here for discussion.

In this book, a multiphase transformation from the legal domain to computer code is explored. The authors consider law enforcement by computer. The target view is that legal machines are legal actors that are capable of triggering institutional facts. In the visualisation of statutorylaw, an approach called Structural Legal Visualisation is presented. Specifically, the visualisation of legal meaning is linked with tertium comparationis, the third part of the comparison. In a legal documentation system, representing one legal source with multiple documents is viewed as a granularity problem. The authors propose to supplement legislative documents ex ante with explicit logic-oriented information in the form of a mini thesaurus. In contrast to so-called strong relations such as synonymy, antonymy and hypernymy/hyponymy, one should consider weak relations: (1) dialectical relations, a term of dialectical antithesis; (2) context relations; and (3) metaphorical relations, which means the use of metaphors for terms. The chapters trace topics such as the distinction between knowledge visualisation and knowledge representation, the visualisation of Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, the separation of law and legal science, legal subsumption, legal relations, legal machines, encapsulation, compliance, transparency, standard cases and hard cases.

Connects law, legal visualisation, and law enforcement by computer Helps software engineers to bridge the gap between law and computer programs Provides a fundamental contribution to legal informatics

Auteur
Vytautas yras is an associate professor of computer science at Vilnius University. He graduated from Vilnius University in 1979, and in 1985 he obtained PhD degree in computing from Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 2007, he obtained a master of laws from Vilnius University. His research interests include computer science, law and legal informatics.
Friedrich Lachmayer obtained a doctor Iuris from the University of Vienna in 1966. From 1967 to 1970, he worked at the Austrian Federal Law Office (Finanzprokuratur), followed by a lengthy service at the Austrian Federal Chancellery, Constitution Service (1970-2003). In 1988, he obtained a habilitation degree at the University of Innsbruck (legal theory and theory of legislation). From 1989 to 2003, he was head of the Austrian Legal Information System. His research interests include legal theory, legislation, legal informatics and legal semiotics.

Contenu

Part I: Legal Visualisation.- Chapter 1. Introduction To Legal Visualisation.- Chapter 2. Situation Versus Case.- Chapter 3. Visualisation As A Tertium Comparationis Within Multilingual Communities.- Chapter 4. Structural Legal Visualization.- Chapter 5. Distinguishing between Knowledge Visualisation and Knowledge Representation in Legal Informatics.- Chapter 6. Criteria for Multidimensional Visualisation in Law.- Part II: On Legal Theory.- Chapter 7. Is And Ought.- Chapter 8. Visualization Of Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory Of Law.- Chapter 9. From Kelsen's Ptl To Yoshino's Logical Jurisprudence.- Chapter 10. Semiotic Aspects Of Law And Legal Science.- Chapter 11. Content Meaning And Institutional Meaning Of A Legal Act.- Part III: Legal Norm.- Chapter 12. Extended Legal Thesaurus: Legal Terms As A Modally Indifferent Substrate.- Chapter 13. Normative Resultants.- Chapter 14. Legal Frameworks Of Three-Dimensional Virtual Worlds.- Chapter 15. Legal Taboos.- Part IV: TextDocument.- Chapter 16. Dual Textuality Of Law.- Chapter 17. Legal Norms And Legal Institutions As A Challenge For Legal Informatics.- Chapter 18. Different Views To Legal Information Systems: Separate Legal Meanings And Legal Sublevels.- Chapter 19. Logic-Oriented Methods For Structuring In The Context Of Lawmaking.- Part V: Subsumption Legal Relations.- Chapter 20. Legal Subsumption.- Chapter 21. Formalising Legal Relations.- Chapter 22. Tertium Comparationis In Law: Variations On Arthur Kaufmann's Theme.- Part VI: Legal Machines Compliance.- Chapter 23. Multisensory Legal Machines And Production Of Legal Acts.- Chapter 24. Formulating The Compliance Problem.- Chapter 25. Software Transparency For The Design Of Legal Machines.- Part VII: Human Digitalities.-Chapter 26. Towards Human Digitalities.- Chapter 27. Multiphase Transformation: From Legal Text to Program.- PART VIII. Argumentation.- Chapter 28. Three Layers of Legal Argumentation: Content, Speech Act, and Role.- Chapter 29. Transparent Complexity by Goals.- Chapter 30. Standard Cases, Hard Cases, Emergency Cases and Scurrile Cases in Jurisprudence.