Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Modeling Relevant Legal Information for Consumer Disputes

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective (EGOVIS 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9831))

Abstract

Accessing relevant legal information found in text excerpts from heterogeneous sources is essential to the decision making process in consumer disputes. The Ontology of Relevant Legal Information in Consumer Disputes (ric) is the domain-independent ontology modeling this relevant legal information comprising rights, their requisites, exceptions, constraints, enforcement procedures, legal sources. Its use is exemplified with one extension thereof, the Air Transport Passenger Incidents Ontology (ric-atpi), representing both the possible incidents triggered by a complaint in the air transport passenger domain and the related legal information that might be applicable. The Ontology models the key provisions found in hard law, and those in soft law, comprising heterogeneous sources in a structured manner. An ontology-based system provides the knowledge embedded in the legal sources and their relation to the specific scenario.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://thomsonreuters.com/en/press-releases/2015/october/thomson-reuters-ibm-collaborate-to-deliver-watson-cognitive-computing-technology.html.

  2. 2.

    http://www.estrellaproject.org/doc/D1.4-OWL-Ontology-of-Basic-Legal-Concepts.pdf.

  3. 3.

    http://europa.eu/eu-law/decision-making/legal-acts/index_en.htm.

  4. 4.

    Hard law corresponds to the situation where hard obligation and hard enforcement are connected [29].

  5. 5.

    Case C-322/88 Grimaldi [1989] ECR 4407, paragraph 18. In Community law, a Recommendation is a legal instrument that enables the Commission to establish non-binding rules for the Member States or, in certain cases, Union citizens. Article 211 of the EC Treaty provides that “[i]n order to ensure the proper functioning and development of the common market, the Commission shall formulate recommendations (…)”.

  6. 6.

    http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/passengers/air/doc/neb-extraordinary-circumstances-list.pdf.

  7. 7.

    ACE—Attempto Controlled English: http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/.

  8. 8.

    At the time of writing of this article, the ontologies had as URI the git URL, but they it is planned to be moved to the http://ricontology.com domain.

  9. 9.

    The SPARQL queries are available online as http://ricontology.com/cq.hml. For example, the following query determines which are the rights for a short delayed departure .

References

  1. Fernández-Barrera, M., Sartor, G.: The legal theory perspective: doctrinal conceptual systems vs. computational ontologies. In: Sartor, G., Casanovas, P., Biasiotti, M., Fernández-Barrera, M. (eds.) Approaches to Legal Ontologies, Theories, Domains, Methodologies. LGT Series, pp. 15–47. Springer, Amsterdam (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Rodríguez-Doncel, V., et al.: A model of air transport passenger incidents and rights. In: Hoekstra, R. (ed.) Proceedings of the 27th JURIX, pp. 55–69. IOS Press (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Cortés, P.: ODR for Consumers, ODR Methods for Settling B2C Conflicts, Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice: A Treatise on Technology and Dispute Resolution, p. 164. Eleven Law Publishing, Utrecht (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Saracevic, T.: Relevance reconsidered, information science: integration in perspectives. In: Second Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, pp. 201–218 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Gruber, T.R.: Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 43, 907–928 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Saracevic, T.: Relevance: a review of the literature and a framework for thinking on the notion in information science. Part II: nature and manifestations of relevance. ASIS&T 58(3), 1915–1933 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Dabney, D.P.: The curse of Thamus: an analysis of full-text legal document retrieval. Law Libr. J. 78, 5–40 (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Micklitz, H.-W., et al.: An introduction to the special issue on behavioural economics, consumer policy, and consumer law. JCP 34, 271–276 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Saravanan, M., et al.: Improving legal information retrieval using an ontological framework. Artif. Intell. Law 17, 101–124 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Jarrar, M.: Towards effectiveness and transparency in e-business transactions, an ontology for customer complaint management. In: Semantic Web Methodologies for E-Business Applications, pp. 127–149 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Bing, J.: Let there be LITE: a brief history of legal information retrieval. EJLT 1(1) (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Blair, D., Maron, M.: An evaluation of retrieval effectiveness for a full-text document-retrieval system. Commun. ACM 28(3), 289–299 (1985)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Suárez-Figueroa, M.C., Gómez-Pérez, A., Motta, E., Gangemi, A. (eds.): Ontology Engineering in a Networked World. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Gómez-Pérez, A., Fernandez-Lopez, M., Corcho, O.: Ontological Engineering: with Examples from the Areas of Knowledge Management, e-Commerce and the Semantic Web. Springer, New York (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Suárez-Figueroa, M.C., Gómez-Pérez, A., Villazón-Terrazas, B.: How to write and use the ontology requirements specification document. In: Meersman, R., Dillon, T., Herrero, P. (eds.) OTM 2009, Part II. LNCS, vol. 5871, pp. 966–982. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Dabney, D.P.: The curse of Thames: an analysis of full-text legal document retrieval. Law Libr. J. 78(5), 5–40 (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Alvite, M.L.: Tendencias a la investigación sobre la recuperación de Información Jurídica. Revista española de Documentación Científica, vol. 26, no. 2 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Schweighofer, E.: The revolution in legal information retrieval or: the empire strikes back. J. Law Inf. Technol. 1 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Moens, M.F.: XML retrieval models for legislation. In: Legal Knowledge Systems JURIX, pp. 1–10 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Gelbart, D., Smith, J.C.: Toward a comprehensive legal information retrieval system. In: DEXA 1990, pp. 121–125 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Turtle, H.: Inference networks for document retrieval. Ph.D. thesis, Computer Science Department Univ. Massachusetts, MA 01003, COINS Technical Report 90-92 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  22. George, C.P., et al.: SMART Electronic Legal Discovery via Topic Modeling [URL]. FLAIRS-27, Pensacola, Florida, USA (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Blei, D.M., Ng, A.Y., Jordan, M.I.: Latent Dirichlet allocation. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 3, 993–1022 (2003)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  24. Uschold, M., Gruninger, M., et al.: Ontologies: principles, methods and applications. Knowl. Eng. Rev. 11(2), 93–136 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Casanovas, P., Casellas, N., Vallbé, J.-J.: Empirically grounded developments of legal ontologies: a socio-legal perspective. In: Sartor, G., Casanovas, P., Biasiotti, M., Fernández-Barrera, M. (eds.) Approaches to Legal Ontologies. LGT Series, vol. 1, pp. 49–67. Springer, Amsterdam (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Opijnen, M.V.: A model for automated rating of case law. In: ICAIL, pp. 140–149 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Terpan, F.: Soft law in the European union the changing nature of EU law. Eur. Law 21, 68–96 (2014). Wiley

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Bench-Capon, T., Coenen, F.: Isomorphism and legal knowledge based systems. Artif. Intell. Law 1(1), 65–86 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Routen, T.: Hierarchically organised formalisations. In: Proceedings of the Second ICAIL. ACM Press, Vancouver, pp. 242–250 (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Karpf, J.: Quality Assurance of Legal Expert Systems. Jurimatics, no. 2, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Prakken, H., Schrickx, J.: Isomorphic models for rules and exceptions in legislation. In: Breuker, J.A.P.J., et al. (eds.) JURIX 91: Model-Based Legal Reasoning. Koninklijke Vermande, Lelystad, pp. 17–27 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Palmirani, M., Contissa, G., Rubino, R.: Fill the gap in the legal knowledge modelling. In: Governatori, G., Hall, J., Paschke, A. (eds.) RuleML 2009. LNCS, vol. 5858, pp. 305–314. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  33. Sergot, M.J.: The representation of law in computer programs. In: Bench-Capon, T.J.M. (ed.) Knowledge Based Systems and Legal Applications, pp. 3–68. Academic Press (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Gordon, T.F.: The Carneades web service. In: Verheij, B. (eds.) Proceedings of Computational Models of Argument, COMMA 2012. IOS Press, pp. 517–518 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  35. McCarthy, L.T.: Onwnership: a case study in the representation of legal concepts. AI&Law J. 10, 135–161 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Gruninger, M., Fox, M.S.: The role of competency questions in enterprise engineering. In: Rolstadås, A. (ed.) WG5.7 Workshop on Benchmarking - Theory and Practice. IFIP, pp. 22–31. Springer, New York (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Uschold, M., King, M.: Towards a methodology for building ontologies. In: Workshop on Basic Ontological Issues in Knowledge Sharing (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Poveda, M., et al.: Oops! (ontology pitfall scanner!): an on-line tool for ontology evaluation. Int. J. Semant. Web Inf. Syst. 10(2), 4–14 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Casanovas, P., et al.: The role of pragmatics in the web of data. In: Poggi, F., Capone, A. (eds.) Pragmatics and Law. Practical and Theoretical Approaches. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Gaines, B.R.: Knowledge acquisition: past, present and future. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 71, 135–156 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Boella, G., et al.: A critical analysis of legal requirements engineering from the perspective of legal practice. In: IEEE 7th International Workshop RELAW, pp. 14–21 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Benjamins, V.R., et al.: The SEKT legal use case components: ontology and architecture. In: Gordon, T. (ed.) Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, JURIX 2004, pp. 69–77. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Research presented in this paper is conducted as a PhD research at the Universities of Barcelona and Luxembourg, within the Erasmus Mundus Joint International Doctoral (Ph.D.) programme in Law, Science and Technology.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IDT-UAB, Barcelona, Spain

    Cristiana Santos & Pompeu Casanovas

  2. Ontology Engineering Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Víctor Rodriguez-Doncel

  3. Centre for Applied Social Sciences, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

    Pompeu Casanovas

  4. University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Cristiana Santos & Leon van der Torre

Authors
  1. Cristiana Santos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Víctor Rodriguez-Doncel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Pompeu Casanovas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Leon van der Torre
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristiana Santos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Andrea Kő

  2. Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques, Florence, Italy

    Enrico Francesconi

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Santos, C., Rodriguez-Doncel, V., Casanovas, P., van der Torre, L. (2016). Modeling Relevant Legal Information for Consumer Disputes. In: Kő, A., Francesconi, E. (eds) Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective. EGOVIS 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9831. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44159-7_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44159-7_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44158-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44159-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation