Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Comparison of Four Ontologies for the Design of Legal Knowledge Systems

  • Published:
Artificial Intelligence and Law Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

There is a growing interest in how people conceptualise the legal domain for the purpose of legal knowledge systems. In this paper we discuss four such conceptualisations (referred to as ontologies): McCarty's language for legal discourse, Stamper's norma formalism, Valente's functional ontology of law, and the ontology of Van Kralingen and Visser. We present criteria for a comparison of the ontologies and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ontologies in relation to these criteria. Moreover, we critically review the criteria.

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

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Allen, R. E. 1990. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Clarendon Press, Oxford, England.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon, T. J. M. 1990. Knowledge Representation; An Approach to Artificial Intelligence, APIC series, No. 32, Academic Press, London, United Kingdom.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon, T. J. M. & Visser, P. R. S. 1996. Deep models, ontologies and legal knowledge based systems, in Van Kralingen et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Legal Knowledge-Based Systems, (JURIX’96), Tilburg, The Netherlands, pp. 1-14.

  • Bench-Capon, T. J. M. & Visser, P. R. S. 1997. Ontologies in legal information systems; the need for explicit specifications of domain conceptualisations, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. (ICAIL’ 97), Melbourne, Australia, pp. 132-141.

  • Breuker, J. A. & van de Velde, W. 1994. In J. A. Breuker and W. van de Velde (eds.), Common KADS Library for Expertise Modelling, Reusable Problem Solving Components, IOS Press, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breuker, J. A., Valente, A., & Winkels, R. G.F. 1997. Legal ontologies: A functional view, P. R. S. Visser and R. G. F. Winkels (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Legal Ontologies, (LEGONT’ 97), 4 July 1997, University of Melbourne, Law School, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 23-36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chandrasekaran, B. & Josephson, J. R. 1997. The ontology of tasks and methods, Working Notes of the AAAI Spring symposium on Ontological Engineering, Stanford University, CA, USA, pp. 9-16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falkenberg, E. D. 1989. Informatiesystemen - aan de kinderschoenen ontstegen?, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (in Dutch).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox, M. S. & Gruninger, M. 1994. Ontologies for enterprise integration, Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Cooperative Information Systems, Toronto, Ont, Canada.

  • Genesereth, M. R. & Fikes, R. E. 1992. Knowledge interchange format, Version 0.3, Reference Manual: Knowledge System Laboratory, Stanford University, CA, USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruber, T. R. 1992. ontolingua: A Mechanism to Support Portable Ontologies, technical report, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruber, T. R. 1993a. Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing, technical report KSL-93-4, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruber, T. R. 1993b. A translation approach to portable ontology specifications, Knowledge Acquisition, No. 5, pp. 199-220.

  • Guarino, N. & Giaretta, P. 1995. Ontologies and knowledge bases, towards a terminological clarification, in N. J. I. Mars (ed.), Towards Very Large Knowledge Bases, IOS Press, Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hage, J. 1996. Book review: Legal knowledge engineering; A modelling approach, by A. Valente (in Dutch), Computerrecht.

  • Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law, Clarendon Law Series, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heijst, G. Van & Schreiber, G. 1994. CUE: Ontology-based knowledge acquisition, in L. Steels, A. Th. Schreiber, and W. Van de Velde (eds.), A Future for Knowledge Acquisition, Proceedings of the 8th European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop EKAW’ 94, Vol. 867 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 178-199, Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heijst, G. Van. 1995. The Role of Ontologies in Knowledge Engineering, Doctoral Thesis, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • Kelsen, H. 1991. General Theory of Norms, Translation of “Allgemeine Theorie der Normen”, Michael Hartney, Clarendon Press, Oxford, England.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kralingen, R. W. van. 1995. Frame-based Conceptual Models of Statute Law, Computer/Law Series, No. 16, Kluwer Law International, The Hague, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kralingen, R. W. van. 1997. A conceptual frame-based ontology for the law, in P. R. S. Visser and R. G. F. Winkels (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Legal Ontologies, (LEGONT’ 97), 4 July 1997, University of Melbourne, Law School, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 15-22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuokka, D. R., McGuire, J., Weber, J. C., Tenenbaum, J. M., Gruber, T. R., & Olsen, G. R.: 1993. SHADE: Knowledge-Based Technology for the Re-Engineering Problem, Annual Report 1993.

  • Lenat, D. B. & Guha, R. V. 1990. Building Large Knowledge-Based Systems; Representation and Inference in the Cyc Project,Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, United States.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacGregor, R. 1990. The evolving technology of classification-based knowledge representation systems, in J. Sowa (ed.), Principles of Semantic Networks: Explorations in the Representation of Knowledge, Morgan Kaufmann.

  • McCarty, L. T. 1989. A language for legal discourse, I. Basic features, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, pp. 180-189, Vancouver, Canada.

  • McCarty, L. T. 1993. OWNERSHIP: A case study in the representation of legal concepts, Presented at a Conference in Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Istituto Documentazione Giuridica, Florence, Italy, 1993.

  • Moles, R. N. & Dayal, S. 1992. There is more to life than logic, Journal of Information Science(draft version), 3(2): 188-218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mommers, L, Schmidt, A. H. J., & Oskamp, E. W. 1997. Controversies in the ontology and law debate, in P. R. S. Visser and R. G. F. Winkels (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Legal Ontologies, (LEGONT’ 97), 4 July 1997, University of Melbourne, Law School, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1-5

    Google Scholar 

  • Morik, K., Wrobel, S., Kietz, J.-U., & Emde, W. 1993. Knowledge Acquisition and Machine Learning; Theory, Methods and Applications, Knowledge-Based Systems, Academic Press Limited, London, United Kingdom.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell, A. 1982. The knowledge level, Artificial Intelligence18: 87-127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schlobohm, D. A. & McCarty, L. T. 1989. EPS II: estate planning with prototypes, Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, pp. 1-10, Vancouver, Canada.

  • Schreiber, G. 1992. Pragmatics of the Knowledge Level, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • Schreiber, G., Wielinga, B. J., Akkermans, J. M., & van de Velde, W. 1994. CML: The Common KADS conceptual modelling language, Proceedings of the EKAW’ 94, Hoegaarden, Belgium.

  • Sim, I. & Rennels, G. 1995. Developing A Clinical Trial Ontology: Comments on Domain Modelling and Ontological Reuse, Knowledge Systems Laboratory & Stanford Medical Informatics, KSL-95-60, June 1995, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stamper, R. K. 1980. LEGOL: Modelling legal rules by computer, in Bryan Niblett (ed.), Computer Science and Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stamper, R. K. 1991. The role of semantics in legal expert systems and legal reasoning, Ratio Juris4(2): 219-244.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stamper, R. K. 1996. Signs, information, norms and systems, in B. Holmqvist and P. B. Andersen (eds.), Signs of Work, De Bruyter, Berlin, Germany.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uschold, M. & Grunninger, M. 1996. Ontologies; principles, methods and applications, Knowledge Engineering Review11(2).

  • Valente, A. 1995. Legal Knowledge Engineering; A Modelling Approach, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, IOS Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visser, P. R. S. 1995. Knowledge Specification for Multiple Legal Tasks; A Case Study of the Interaction Problem in the Legal Domain, Computer/Law Series, No. 17, Kluwer Law International, The Hague, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visser, P. R. S. & Bench-Capon, T. J. M. 1996a. On the reusability of Ontologies in Knowledge System design, Seventh International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications(DEXA’96), pp. 256-261, Zurich, Switzerland.

  • Visser, P. R. S., & Bench-Capon, T. J. M. 1996b. The formal specification of a legal ontology, in R. W. Van Kralingen (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Legal Knowledge-Based Systems(JURIX’ 96), Tilburg, The Netherlands, pp. 15-24.

  • Visser, P. R. S. & Bench-Capon, T. J. M. 1997. A comparison of two legal ontologies, in P. R. S. Visser and R. G. F. Winkels (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Legal Ontologies, (LEGONT’ 97), 4 July 1997, University of Melbourne, Law School, Melbourne, Australia (also available at: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/ pepijn/legont.html), pp. 37-45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visser, P. R. S., Jones, D. M., Bench-Capon, T. J. M., & Shave, M. J.R. 1997. An analysis of ontology mismatches; heterogeneity versus interoperability, Working Notes of the AAAI Spring symposium on Ontological Engineering, Stanford University, CA, USA, pp. 164-172.

  • Visser, P. R. S. & Winkels, R. G. F. 1997. Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Legal Ontologies, (LEGONT’ 97), 4 July 1997, University of Melbourne, Law School, Melbourne, Australia (also available at: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/ pepijn/legont.html).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiederhold, G. 1994). Interoperation, mediation, and ontologies, Proceedings International Symposium on Fifth Generation Computer Systems, (FGCS’ 94), Workshop on Heterogeneous Cooperative Knowledge-Bases, Vol. W3, pp. 33-48, ICOT, Tokyo, Japan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, G. H. Von 1963. Practical Reason, Philosophical Papers, Vol.1, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LIAL – Legal Informatics at Liverpool, Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, P.O. Box 147, Liverpool, L69 7ZF, United Kingdom

    Pepijn R. S. Visser & Trevor J. M. Bench-Capon

Authors
  1. Pepijn R. S. Visser
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Trevor J. M. Bench-Capon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Visser, P.R.S., Bench-Capon, T.J.M. A Comparison of Four Ontologies for the Design of Legal Knowledge Systems. Artificial Intelligence and Law 6, 27–57 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008251913710

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008251913710

Keywords

Search

Navigation