OASIS LegalDocumentML (LegalDocML) TC

There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term "bill" is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - "Titles" in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as "acts" -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738

Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However bill and act are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use bill for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and act for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that bill is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. bill is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future law in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly act includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term bill is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - Titles in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as acts -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However "bill" and "act" are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use "bill" for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and "act" for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that "bill" is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. "bill" is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future "law" in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly "act" includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term "bill" is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - "Titles" in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as "acts" -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738

Dear Grant, sorry but as Fabio said in the previous email about ontology, I need to boring you, and the others, with some preliminary notions of theory of law (at the end I am coming from philosophy of law department). For your more curiosity you can find good literature in http://plato.stanford.edu/ (Kelsen, Bobbio, Hart, Raz, Ross, etc.). Preamble: Lesson learn in Italy in the definition of taxonomy of legal documents. One of the main discussion in Italy during NormeInRete definition standard was how to classify the different type of normative acts (including those document already passed like Royal Decree) and to find a common terminology. We discussed for two years and at the end we obtained a list of 20 different denominations for covering all the possible normative documentation used in Italy in any situation. We lost time, definitely we lost generality and abstractness and the possibility to have a fruitful dialogue with other legal system (e.g. Europe, US, etc.).   For each country law and act means a different type of documents and as well as for bill . Usually the meaning of these terms are linked to other parameters like authority, steps in the law-making process, juridical effect, jurisdiction, geo-spatial scope, legal tradition. Simply called metadata. So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses bill with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent the bill the act as concrete document in a country tradition.  What is it a LAW in legal theory? it is not a document!! 1) LAW is any normative statements (also oral also in picture) that were endorsed by a powered authority, addressed to some subject, producing some legal effects. The authority could be for example, and this is not an exhaustive list: legislative body, governative agency, military committee, ministry, etc.  What is it a normative ACT ? 2) The normative statements are usually expressed, but not limited, by textual document called NORMATIVE ACT. A normative ACT (now called ACT as abbreviation) could be for example, and this is not an exhaustive list: legislative act (so called law lower-case), statute, constitution, resolution, etc. Also resolution includes normative statements that have some validity and some juridical effects (e.g. in jurisprudence, etc.). LAW is a general concept of normative statements, LAW is expressed by a NORMATIVE ACT --> briefly called ACT So a resolution is a NORMATIVE ACT, the positive code is definitely a NORMATIVE ACT, an act (lowe-case) is an ACT, the non-positive law probably is not a NORMATIVE ACT, but it is simply a DOC. I agree with you. NORMATIVE ACT is also government act, ministry act, regulation, directive, ordinance, communication, municipality law, region law, etc. What is it a BILL cleaned to the other parameters/metadata? 3) BILL is any preliminary document that the intention is to become a normative act. BILL in our nomenclature is only a category of ideal document, neutral respect the other metadata that we can define separately.  We have the block <workflow> for defining the procedural steps, we have <proponent> for defining the initiative proponent, we have @refersTo for defining the correct meaning of the document according to a local ontology. BILL: include bill in strict sense, initiative by the people, bill that introduces amendments to other normative act, draft version of European directive, etc. In other words we have a meta-level around NORMATIVE ACT and BILL (draftNormativeAct?). Below we have a list of document nomenclature related to each single legal tradition, law-making process, etc.           GENERAL                                                  NORMATIVE ACT                                                                            /                                 LOCAL LEGAL TRADITION            act            statue        constitution ..... regulation.... etc. About the terms chosen, at the end any synecdoche uses a well-known term for evocating something different ( Use of the term The Internet to refer to the World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche ). Finally: I propose you to define together a taxonomy/light-ontology/vocabulary (defined outside of the TC) concerning the nomenclature of the normative acts used in US and to link this taxonomy to the tag <act refersTo= #resolution > using refersTo. In this way you can use your ontology, the Chile its ontology in Spanish with their specific nomenclature, Italy as well its ontology in Italian. What do you think about this? Yours, Monica Il 07/02/2013 19:51, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However bill and act are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use bill for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and act for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that bill is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. bill is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future law in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly act includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term bill is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - Titles in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as acts -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

Just starting to listen to the listserv. Considering the XML tags do not have legal standing so that the name of the tag or attributes do not have meaning, has there been an effort to show people how to abstract their legal system and map it into the Akoma Ntoso vocabulary. I would think that having an abstraction layer that can be mapped (literally/actually) would be great and then a way to use that as a template to bridge the abstract layer to the AKN layer would help with this confusion. Also, this might allow for faster and better mapping to AKN and as well allowing comparing two or more legal systems at both the abstract layer and the AKN layer. My apologies if this work has already been done. I am looking to use this eventually to create a way to create model language/code for various US states, that could be more easily translated into the specific version of AKN  for each state. Thanks, Daniel daniel@citizencontact.com +1-202-651-1964 skype/twitter/linkedin: citizencontact On 2/7/2013 6:31 PM, monica.palmirani wrote: Dear Grant, sorry but as Fabio said in the previous email about ontology, I need to boring you, and the others, with some preliminary notions of theory of law (at the end I am coming from philosophy of law department). For your more curiosity you can find good literature in http://plato.stanford.edu/ (Kelsen, Bobbio, Hart, Raz, Ross, etc.). Preamble: Lesson learn in Italy in the definition of taxonomy of legal documents. One of the main discussion in Italy during NormeInRete definition standard was how to classify the different type of normative acts (including those document already passed like Royal Decree) and to find a common terminology. We discussed for two years and at the end we obtained a list of 20 different denominations for covering all the possible normative documentation used in Italy in any situation. We lost time, definitely we lost generality and abstractness and the possibility to have a fruitful dialogue with other legal system (e.g. Europe, US, etc.).   For each country law and act means a different type of documents and as well as for bill . Usually the meaning of these terms are linked to other parameters like authority, steps in the law-making process, juridical effect, jurisdiction, geo-spatial scope, legal tradition. Simply called metadata. So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses bill with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent the bill the act as concrete document in a country tradition.  What is it a LAW in legal theory? it is not a document!! 1) LAW is any normative statements (also oral also in picture) that were endorsed by a powered authority, addressed to some subject, producing some legal effects. The authority could be for example, and this is not an exhaustive list: legislative body, governative agency, military committee, ministry, etc.  What is it a normative ACT ? 2) The normative statements are usually expressed, but not limited, by textual document called NORMATIVE ACT. A normative ACT (now called ACT as abbreviation) could be for example, and this is not an exhaustive list: legislative act (so called law lower-case), statute, constitution, resolution, etc. Also resolution includes normative statements that have some validity and some juridical effects (e.g. in jurisprudence, etc.). LAW is a general concept of normative statements, LAW is expressed by a NORMATIVE ACT --> briefly called ACT So a resolution is a NORMATIVE ACT, the positive code is definitely a NORMATIVE ACT, an act (lowe-case) is an ACT, the non-positive law probably is not a NORMATIVE ACT, but it is simply a DOC. I agree with you. NORMATIVE ACT is also government act, ministry act, regulation, directive, ordinance, communication, municipality law, region law, etc. What is it a BILL cleaned to the other parameters/metadata? 3) BILL is any preliminary document that the intention is to become a normative act. BILL in our nomenclature is only a category of ideal document, neutral respect the other metadata that we can define separately.  We have the block <workflow> for defining the procedural steps, we have <proponent> for defining the initiative proponent, we have @refersTo for defining the correct meaning of the document according to a local ontology. BILL: include bill in strict sense, initiative by the people, bill that introduces amendments to other normative act, draft version of European directive, etc. In other words we have a meta-level around NORMATIVE ACT and BILL (draftNormativeAct?). Below we have a list of document nomenclature related to each single legal tradition, law-making process, etc.           GENERAL                                                  NORMATIVE ACT                                                                            /                                 LOCAL LEGAL TRADITION            act            statue        constitution ..... regulation.... etc. About the terms chosen, at the end any synecdoche uses a well-known term for evocating something different ( Use of the term The Internet to refer to the World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche ). Finally: I propose you to define together a taxonomy/light-ontology/vocabulary (defined outside of the TC) concerning the nomenclature of the normative acts used in US and to link this taxonomy to the tag <act refersTo= #resolution > using refersTo. In this way you can use your ontology, the Chile its ontology in Spanish with their specific nomenclature, Italy as well its ontology in Italian. What do you think about this? Yours, Monica Il 07/02/2013 19:51, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However bill and act are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use bill for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and act for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that bill is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. bill is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future law in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly act includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term bill is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - Titles in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as acts -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

On 2/7/13 6:31 PM, monica.palmirani wrote: Dear Grant, [snip] So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses bill with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent the bill the act as concrete document in a country tradition.   Monica: Sorry, but I must agree with Grant on this matter -- to the point of insistence.  This is not a philosophical point; it's a pragmatic political issue.  The people that we wish to adopt AkomaNtoso need to find it recognizable. You may argue all you want that you have, for sound reasons, chosen a single term to serve as an abstraction covering many.  But if they hear something used generally for which there is a specific meaning, they will doubt your expertise and the soundness of the standard.  To them, it sounds as though you're pointing at a cow and telling them it's a chair, when in fact you've chosen chair to mean all things beginning with the letter c . That is particularly so when you jump branches. Grant has a horror of referring to resolutions as bills ;  I suspect it will be even worse if you refer to an executive branch document like a proposed rule (regulation) or an ANPRM (advance notice of proposed rulemaking) as a bill . Put another way, all the arguments that have led you to allow localization of the names of nested elements for text structure (parts, sections, chapters, etc) apply to this as well. I believe it needs to be fixed, not as an intellectual matter, but as a matter of credibility with the people we are trying to persuade to use the standard. All  the best, Tb. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Thomas R. Bruce Director, Legal Information Institute Cornell Law School http://www.law.cornell.edu twitter: @trbruce +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

Start again with the main pillars of Akoma Ntoso: We need two terms general enough for not depending from a particular legal tradition (e.g. too much US oriented for instance or not too much Euroepan), not depending to a specific government form (one chamber, two chambers, three chambers) or to a specific senate/chamber regulation, not depending to the law-making process (steps and workflow) We need two terms that represent two macro-categories of legislative documentation: normativeDocumentApproved and draftNormativeDocument (in Swiss they have a beautiful document that is a pre-draftNormativeDocument called avamprogetto). Take in care the point that we need to include also secondary law, regional law, ordinance, subsidiary law, etc. not only the primary law and also government regulation/legislation. Please don't skip this crucial issue that you didn't address in the last answers. We need also two terms that are closed to the legal domain because the people need to understand without confusion The terms must be sound to all the legal traditions not only to anglophone's one. Akoma Ntoso is an XML schema based on the principle of descriptiveness but general enough for not enter in the list of the specific local nomenclatur So these are the main pillars. Please propose a tentative list of TWO terms that are compliance with those rules. mp Il 08/02/2013 15:43, Thomas R. Bruce ha scritto: On 2/7/13 6:31 PM, monica.palmirani wrote: Dear Grant, [snip] So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses bill with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent the bill the act as concrete document in a country tradition.   Monica: Sorry, but I must agree with Grant on this matter -- to the point of insistence.  This is not a philosophical point; it's a pragmatic political issue.  The people that we wish to adopt AkomaNtoso need to find it recognizable. You may argue all you want that you have, for sound reasons, chosen a single term to serve as an abstraction covering many.  But if they hear something used generally for which there is a specific meaning, they will doubt your expertise and the soundness of the standard.  To them, it sounds as though you're pointing at a cow and telling them it's a chair, when in fact you've chosen chair to mean all things beginning with the letter c . That is particularly so when you jump branches. Grant has a horror of referring to resolutions as bills ;  I suspect it will be even worse if you refer to an executive branch document like a proposed rule (regulation) or an ANPRM (advance notice of proposed rulemaking) as a bill . Put another way, all the arguments that have led you to allow localization of the names of nested elements for text structure (parts, sections, chapters, etc) apply to this as well. I believe it needs to be fixed, not as an intellectual matter, but as a matter of credibility with the people we are trying to persuade to use the standard. All  the best, Tb. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Thomas R. Bruce Director, Legal Information Institute Cornell Law School http://www.law.cornell.edu twitter: @trbruce +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

Hello. If I may add to this list of requirements, I wish we end up choosing two terms that are: 1) Nouns 2) Short 3) Common. Thanks Fabio -- Il giorno 08/feb/2013, alle ore 17.03, monica.palmirani ha scritto: > Start again with the main pillars of Akoma Ntoso: > • We need two terms general enough for not depending from a particular legal tradition (e.g. too much US oriented for instance or not too much Euroepan), not depending to a specific government form (one chamber, two chambers, three chambers) or to a specific senate/chamber regulation, not depending to the law-making process (steps and workflow) > • We need two terms that represent two macro-categories of legislative documentation: normativeDocumentApproved and draftNormativeDocument (in Swiss they have a beautiful document that is a pre-draftNormativeDocument called avamprogetto). Take in care the point that we need to include also secondary law, regional law, ordinance, subsidiary law, etc. not only the primary law and also government regulation/legislation. Please don't skip this crucial issue that you didn't address in the last answers. > • We need also two terms that are closed to the legal domain because the people need to understand without confusion > • The terms must be sound to all the legal traditions not only to anglophone's one. > • Akoma Ntoso is an XML schema based on the principle of descriptiveness but general enough for not enter in the list of the specific local nomenclatur > So these are the main pillars. > Please propose a tentative list of TWO terms that are compliance with those rules. > mp > Il 08/02/2013 15:43, Thomas R. Bruce ha scritto: >> On 2/7/13 6:31 PM, monica.palmirani wrote: >>> Dear Grant, >>> [snip] >>> >>> So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses "bill" with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). >>> >>> So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent "the bill" "the act" as concrete document in a country tradition. >>> >> Monica: >> >> Sorry, but I must agree with Grant on this matter -- to the point of insistence. This is not a philosophical point; it's a pragmatic political issue. The people that we wish to adopt AkomaNtoso need to find it recognizable. You may argue all you want that you have, for sound reasons, chosen a single term to serve as an abstraction covering many. But if they hear something used generally for which there is a specific meaning, they will doubt your expertise and the soundness of the standard. To them, it sounds as though you're pointing at a cow and telling them it's a chair, when in fact you've chosen "chair" to mean "all things beginning with the letter c". >> >> That is particularly so when you jump branches. Grant has a horror of referring to resolutions as "bills"; I suspect it will be even worse if you refer to an executive branch document like a proposed rule (regulation) or an ANPRM (advance notice of proposed rulemaking) as a "bill". >> >> Put another way, all the arguments that have led you to allow localization of the names of nested elements for text structure (parts, sections, chapters, etc) apply to this as well. >> >> I believe it needs to be fixed, not as an intellectual matter, but as a matter of credibility with the people we are trying to persuade to use the standard. >> >> All the best, >> Tb. >> -- >> +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ >> Thomas R. Bruce >> Director, Legal Information Institute >> Cornell Law School >> >> http://www.law.cornell.edu >> >> twitter: @trbruce >> +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ >> > > > -- > =================================== > Associate professor of Legal Informatics > School of Law > Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna > C.I.R.S.F.I.D. > http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ > > Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 > I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) > Tel +39 051 277217 > Fax +39 051 260782 > E-mail > monica.palmirani@unibo.it > > ==================================== > > -- Fabio Vitali Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly, Dept. of Computer Science Man got to sit and wonder "Why, why, why?' Univ. of Bologna ITALY Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land, phone: +39 051 2094872 Man got to tell himself he understand. e-mail: fabio@cs.unibo.it Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), "Cat's cradle" http://vitali.web.cs.unibo.it/

Hi Monica, Tom, Fabio, Flavio, and all,   I am sorry to be bringing this up at this point. I am working across five different legal traditions and it consumes a lot of my time. This distraction has kept me from bringing up issues that arise at the right point in time along the TC timeline. But I still try very hard to make as much time for the TC as I can and I am very committed to make Akoma Ntoso a success. Through all my projects, I am getting a lot of experience in both the technical and people aspects of introducing a schema. I have learned, the hard way, of the pitfalls of trying to force terminology on someone when it is in conflict with what they already know. When a proposal requires someone to rethink the very models that define the value of their job, it creates a crisis in their lives. They question there own qualifications to be there. They will come to the point where either you and your overly complex ideas or they themselves must go. Chances are, they'll choose to keep their own job. We cannot offer up a standard that, while abstract and self-consistent, is perceived as too different from what people already think they know to be adopted. For me, there are four broad categories of legislative output and similar output from related but non-legislative agencies. I can see how to handle two of these categories (1 & 3 below), but not the other two.  The four categories are:   1) Proposed Law. These documents become law upon approval. Proper bills, initiatives, propositions, and US joint resolutions are all examples. Broadly categorizing them all as an abstract notion of a bill is acceptable to me - but with a clear mapping to local terminology.   2) Statements and Opinions. These documents do not become law upon approval. This includes most types of resolutions including, but not limited to, constitutional amendments. Commendatory or commemorative resolutions are other more obvious examples. They will recognize a person's accomplishments or an important event in history, but they don't change the law for anyone. These are not bills! They need a term that does not imply they become law.   3) Enacted Law: These are the law. Acts, "positive law" codes, ordinances, regulations, and constitutions are examples. I suppose that proclaimed law such as executive orders and decrees will also fall into this category too. Of course, there will be a good dose of controversy as to the validity of these documents, but that is not for us to debate. Broadly categorizing all of these documents as an abstract notion of acts is acceptable to me - but only with a clear mapping to local terminology.   4) Informative classifications or compilations of the law: These are evidence of the law, but are not law. The obvious example are the non-positive titles of the US Code. These documents have never been enacted and are not acts. In fact, I don't believe that the non-positive titles of the US Code are subject to any scrutiny by Congress itself. They're simply the output of the Law Revision Counsel. They're an index of sorts. I believe that some jurisdictions build documents that consolidate amendments to produce a new informative, but not authoritative, document. I would guess that this document would also fall within this category as it is not enacted.   I am of the opinion that all four categories need to be treated distinctly in order that a system may correctly interpret how these documents relate to law without having to understand localized meaning. For instance, a constitutional amendment reads as an amendment to the constitution. In fact, it looks quite a bit like a normal bill. But upon passage, it does not change the constitution. It is a recommendation to the people only. In the somewhat unlikely event that the proposition that results passes a general election, only then will the constitution change. How can a system, without any special knowledge of local terminology, understand that the amendments contained with a constitutional amendment do not apply despite passage of the document?   Secondly, I believe that there needs to be a simple and clear way to map familiar local terminology into the tags used by Akoma Ntoso. You might be tempted to refer to "normative" tags and developing ontologies or taxonomies that map into them in some elegant fashion, but that is going to fly over the heads of the people most resistant to the use of abstract terminology. The solution must be obvious to someone whose focus is a day-to-day job within a single legislature.   Thanks for taking the time for hearing my concern,   -Grant   On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:43 AM, Thomas R. Bruce < tom@liicornell.org > wrote: On 2/7/13 6:31 PM, monica.palmirani wrote: Dear Grant, [snip] So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses "bill" with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent "the bill" "the act" as concrete document in a country tradition.   Monica: Sorry, but I must agree with Grant on this matter -- to the point of insistence.  This is not a philosophical point; it's a pragmatic political issue.  The people that we wish to adopt AkomaNtoso need to find it recognizable. You may argue all you want that you have, for sound reasons, chosen a single term to serve as an abstraction covering many.  But if they hear something used generally for which there is a specific meaning, they will doubt your expertise and the soundness of the standard.  To them, it sounds as though you're pointing at a cow and telling them it's a chair, when in fact you've chosen "chair" to mean "all things beginning with the letter c". That is particularly so when you jump branches. Grant has a horror of referring to resolutions as "bills";  I suspect it will be even worse if you refer to an executive branch document like a proposed rule (regulation) or an ANPRM (advance notice of proposed rulemaking) as a "bill". Put another way, all the arguments that have led you to allow localization of the names of nested elements for text structure (parts, sections, chapters, etc) apply to this as well. I believe it needs to be fixed, not as an intellectual matter, but as a matter of credibility with the people we are trying to persuade to use the standard. All  the best, Tb. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Thomas R. Bruce Director, Legal Information Institute Cornell Law School http://www.law.cornell.edu twitter: @trbruce +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738

Dear Grant, > For me, there are four broad categories of legislative output and similar output from related but non-legislative agencies. I can see how to handle two of these categories (1 & 3 below), but not the other two. The four categories are: > > 1) Proposed Law. These documents become law upon approval. Proper bills, initiatives, propositions, and US joint resolutions are all examples. Broadly categorizing them all as an abstract notion of a bill is acceptable to me - but with a clear mapping to local terminology. The Document Type Formerly Known as Bill (DTFKB) > 2) Statements and Opinions. These documents do not become law upon approval. This includes most types of resolutions including, but not limited to, constitutional amendments. Commendatory or commemorative resolutions are other more obvious examples. They will recognize a person's accomplishments or an important event in history, but they don't change the law for anyone. These are not bills! They need a term that does not imply they become law. Amendments have their own document type, amendment. All the others do not have neither a specific structural pattern, nor a shared category, therefore the document type "doc" would seem the best choice. > 3) Enacted Law: These are the law. Acts, "positive law" codes, ordinances, regulations, and constitutions are examples. I suppose that proclaimed law such as executive orders and decrees will also fall into this category too. Of course, there will be a good dose of controversy as to the validity of these documents, but that is not for us to debate. Broadly categorizing all of these documents as an abstract notion of acts is acceptable to me - but only with a clear mapping to local terminology. DTFKA > 4) Informative classifications or compilations of the law: These are evidence of the law, but are not law. The obvious example are the non-positive titles of the US Code. These documents have never been enacted and are not acts. In fact, I don't believe that the non-positive titles of the US Code are subject to any scrutiny by Congress itself. They're simply the output of the Law Revision Counsel. They're an index of sorts. I believe that some jurisdictions build documents that consolidate amendments to produce a new informative, but not authoritative, document. I would guess that this document would also fall within this category as it is not enacted. The US Code, inasmuch as it is a collection of Sections, is a documentCollection. Each individual Title of the Code has the same nature and structure as the others, and contain (a possibly reorganized form of) enacted norms. There is little doubts that positive titles are DTFKA, and therefore all titles should be DTFKAs. The fact tha some are positive and some are not has no impact on neither their content, nor their structure, but only on the authorship of the corresponding work and expression. Consider the differences between Statute X, and Title Z of the US Code. Statute X was enacted on date T1, and modified by Statute Y, entering in force on date T2. Both versions were converted into XML by Grant on dates T3 and T4, respectively. Grant also determined the content of the new version by applying modification specification of Y onto the first version of X. * The first version of X has the following identification characteristics: Work: FRBRuri: /us/act/T1/X FRBRcountry: US FRBRsubtype: statute FRBRauthor: #legislator (or #congress), FRBRdate: T1 Expression FRBRuri: /us/act/T1/X@ FRBRauthor: #legislator (or #congress), FRBRdate: T1 Manifestation: FRBRuri: /us/act/T1/X@.akn FRBRauthor: #grantvergottini (or #xcential), FRBRdate: T3 FRBRformat: akn References: original: X * The second version of X has the following identification characteristics: Work: FRBRuri: /us/act/T1/X FRBRcountry: US FRBRsubtype: statute FRBRauthor: #legislator (or #congress), FRBRdate: T1 Expression FRBRuri: /us/act/T1/X@T2 FRBRauthor: #grantvergottini (or #xcential), FRBRdate: T2 Manifestation: FRBRuri: /us/act/T1/X@T2.akn FRBRauthor: #grantvergottini (or #xcential), FRBRdate: T4 FRBRformat: akn References: original: X passiveRef: Y On the other hand, Code Z was created by OLRC out of statute S on date T5, which was modified by Statute T, entering in force on date T6. Both versions were converted into XML by Grant on dates T7 and T8, respectively. OLRC also determined the content of the new version by applying modification specification of statute T onto statute S. * The first version of Z has the following identification characteristics: Work: FRBRuri: /us/act/T5/Z FRBRcountry: US FRBRsubtype: Title of Code FRBRauthor: #olrc, FRBRdate: T5 Expression FRBRuri: /us/act/T5/Z@ FRBRauthor: #olrc, FRBRdate: T5 Manifestation: FRBRuri: /us/act/T5/Z@.akn FRBRauthor: #grantvergottini (or #xcential), FRBRdate: T7 FRBRformat: akn References: original: S * The second version of Z has the following identification characteristics: Work: FRBRuri: /us/act/T5/Z FRBRcountry: US FRBRsubtype: Title of Code FRBRauthor: #olrc, FRBRdate: T5 Expression FRBRuri: /us/act/T5/Z@T6 FRBRauthor: #olrc, FRBRdate: T6 Manifestation: FRBRuri: /us/act/T5/Z@T6.akn FRBRauthor: #grantvergottini (or #xcential), FRBRdate: T8 FRBRformat: akn References: original: S passiveRef: T These are the main differences: while in a positive act (such as statute X) the author of the work is the emanating authority (e.g., the Congress), in a non-positive document the author of the work is the publishing organization (in this case, the OLRC). Furthermore, while a positive act has its origin in itself (its enactment caused its own existence), a non positive document owes its origin to a different document (and therefore original is itself for Statute X and is Statute S for the Code Title. Everything else is exactly the same. It is also interesting to point out that subsequent versions of both positive and non-positive documents behave in exactly the same way: the Work data never changes, and the Expression data, in both cases, shyly confess that the content of the document is an editorial construct by someone that is not the Legislator, and specify in a passiveRef the (positive) document containing the specifications of the modifications. > I am of the opinion that all four categories need to be treated distinctly in order that a system may correctly interpret how these documents relate to law without having to understand localized meaning. For instance, a constitutional amendment reads as an amendment to the constitution. In fact, it looks quite a bit like a normal bill. But upon passage, it does not change the constitution. It is a recommendation to the people only. In the somewhat unlikely event that the proposition that results passes a general election, only then will the constitution change. How can a system, without any special knowledge of local terminology, understand that the amendments contained with a constitutional amendment do not apply despite passage of the document? Because, let me stress this a lot, the end time of a DTFKB and the moment in which the chrysalis becomes a full butterfly is NOT necessarily the final passage by the congress, but the moment in which the document enters into the legal system. Akoma Ntoso distinguishes between the moment in which the act enters in force (enactment?) and the moment in which its norms have an effect on the citizens (validity?). The enactment is the moment in which the act appears as a member of the legal system. Regardless of whether it is actually active, the document cannot be changed anymore by amendments of the congress, but requires a document of the same strength (e.g., another act) to e modified, hereby creating a new version of the same document. In the case of the constitutional amendment, therefore, there can be only two situations (I am not a scholar in these matter, so I don't know, but I know there is no third way): 1) the constitutional amendment exists in the legal system as soon as it is passed by the congress, although in a not-yet-valid state (which means that it requires another constitutional amendment to be further modified, and can be referred to by other legislative documents), in which case the passage of congress is also the moment in which the bills stops existing and the act starts; or 2) the constitutional amendment does not yet exist in the legal system despite having been passed by the congress, and will exist only once the referendum results have been accounted and some authority (e.g. the President?) has determined the official enactment date. This is a frequent occurrence, for instance, in Switzerland, where every act can be subject to a people referendum, so that after passage there is a time interval where signatures can be collected to ask for a referendum. If no referendum is requested, then after the expiry date of the referendum request the bill silently becomes act, otherwise the document is maintained as a bill for as long as it takes to hold the referendum, count the votes and declare the referendum successful, and only after that there is an official enactment date where the bill transforms into an act. > Secondly, I believe that there needs to be a simple and clear way to map familiar local terminology into the tags used by Akoma Ntoso. You might be tempted to refer to "normative" tags and developing ontologies or taxonomies that map into them in some elegant fashion, but that is going to fly over the heads of the people most resistant to the use of abstract terminology. The solution must be obvious to someone whose focus is a day-to-day job within a single legislature. I am very skeptical that by ADDING terminology as to authoritativeness and normativeness of documents we obtain something useful. I strongly believe that the whole matter of authoritativeness must remain orthogonal to the structure of the document, and not impact on the choice of tags and elements. It is a matter of the ontological infrastructure dominating its metadata, and not of the markup structure of the content. I can be much more boring than this on this very subject. For instance, we could start discussing the ontological nature of an Italian Law Decree, which is an executive act promulgated for reasons of urgency and necessity by the government on behalf and in anticipation of an actual act of the Parliament, and which MUST be later approved and promulgated as an actual Act by the Parliament, failing which the Law Decree has never existed and its effect disappear ex tunc, i.e. from the very beginning of its emanation by the government. This is a situation we can easily deal with in AKoma Ntoso. Non-positive titles of the US Code or acts subject to referendum give me no fear. Ciao Fabio -- > > Thanks for taking the time for hearing my concern, > > -Grant > > > > On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:43 AM, Thomas R. Bruce <tom@liicornell.org> wrote: > On 2/7/13 6:31 PM, monica.palmirani wrote: >> Dear Grant, >> [snip] >> >> >> So we decided in AKOMA to use a different approach: to use neutral categories coming from the theory of law and not from a list of document nomenclature, list that each country could interpreted in different way. Example: US uses "bill" with a particular meaning in a such particular step of the process, but in Australia bill has a different meaning, and also in California bill is different respect House of Representative bill, and in UK the same, without to speak in Italy (we have several different bills: from government, from parliament, from people, from regions). >> >> So let me start on the fact that we used more abstract categories coming from the theory of law: LAW, ACT and BILL (uppercase) belong to general theory of law definitions in this sense and not represent "the bill" "the act" as concrete document in a country tradition. >> > Monica: > > Sorry, but I must agree with Grant on this matter -- to the point of insistence. This is not a philosophical point; it's a pragmatic political issue. The people that we wish to adopt AkomaNtoso need to find it recognizable. You may argue all you want that you have, for sound reasons, chosen a single term to serve as an abstraction covering many. But if they hear something used generally for which there is a specific meaning, they will doubt your expertise and the soundness of the standard. To them, it sounds as though you're pointing at a cow and telling them it's a chair, when in fact you've chosen "chair" to mean "all things beginning with the letter c". > > That is particularly so when you jump branches. Grant has a horror of referring to resolutions as "bills"; I suspect it will be even worse if you refer to an executive branch document like a proposed rule (regulation) or an ANPRM (advance notice of proposed rulemaking) as a "bill". > > Put another way, all the arguments that have led you to allow localization of the names of nested elements for text structure (parts, sections, chapters, etc) apply to this as well. > > I believe it needs to be fixed, not as an intellectual matter, but as a matter of credibility with the people we are trying to persuade to use the standard. > > All the best, > Tb. > -- > +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ > Thomas R. Bruce > Director, Legal Information Institute > Cornell Law School > > http://www.law.cornell.edu > > twitter: @trbruce > +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ > > > > > -- > ____________________________________________________________________ > Grant Vergottini > Xcential Group, LLC. > email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com > phone: 858.361.6738 -- Fabio Vitali Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly, Dept. of Computer Science Man got to sit and wonder "Why, why, why?' Univ. of Bologna ITALY Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land, phone: +39 051 2094872 Man got to tell himself he understand. e-mail: fabio@cs.unibo.it Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), "Cat's cradle" http://vitali.web.cs.unibo.it/

On 8 February 2013 02:31, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant,Finally: I propose you to define together a taxonomy/light-ontology/vocabulary (defined outside of the TC) concerning the nomenclature of the normative acts used in US and to link this taxonomy to the tag <act refersTo="#resolution"> using refersTo. In this way you can use your ontology, the Chile its ontology in Spanish with their specific nomenclature, Italy as well its ontology in Italian. What do you think about this? The below note is from Flavio, since he couldnt reply to the mailing list  ( I agree too )  : Since we are talking about "people" I dare to step in. I do tend to agree with Grant. Monica in your response you may find possible "generic terms": "bill" could become "proposal", you wrote "pre-proposal" "act" could become "approved ?????" So I do agree with Grant that "people" get mislead by terms like "bill/act" that are "loaded" with specific meanings. "Bill/act" may not be the best way to represent the "concepts" of "document proposal" and "document approved" that are what Akoma Ntoso "bill/act" are about. Thank you. Flavio Il 07/02/2013 19:51, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However "bill" and "act" are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use "bill" for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and "act" for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that "bill" is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. "bill" is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future "law" in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly "act" includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term "bill" is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - "Titles" in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as "acts" -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

Ashok and all, On the seemingly neutral suggestion of approved and proposal , the United States has a document called the US Code which is mixed approved and explanatory text. And even though there is a bill and act difference, the US uses them in weird ways. I do like that Monica brings up the way of thinking about these issues which makes sense. But what may help is using an abstract model of each particular system with a mapping into AKN will help show how her thinking can best be represented and work for a particular jurisdiction. Daniel daniel@citizencontact.com On 2/8/2013 9:55 AM, Ashok Hariharan wrote: On 8 February 2013 02:31, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant,Finally: I propose you to define together a taxonomy/light-ontology/vocabulary (defined outside of the TC) concerning the nomenclature of the normative acts used in US and to link this taxonomy to the tag <act refersTo= #resolution > using refersTo. In this way you can use your ontology, the Chile its ontology in Spanish with their specific nomenclature, Italy as well its ontology in Italian. What do you think about this? The below note is from Flavio, since he couldnt reply to the mailing list  ( I agree too )  : Since we are talking about people I dare to step in. I do tend to agree with Grant. Monica in your response you may find possible generic terms : bill could become proposal , you wrote pre-proposal act could become approved ????? So I do agree with Grant that people get mislead by terms like bill/act that are loaded with specific meanings. Bill/act may not be the best way to represent the concepts of document proposal and document approved that are what Akoma Ntoso bill/act are about. Thank you. Flavio Il 07/02/2013 19:51, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However bill and act are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use bill for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and act for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that bill is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. bill is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future law in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly act includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term bill is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - Titles in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as acts -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

approved is an attribute for declared a status not a name of a document proposal of what? also an agreement could be a proposal. it seems to me that we have not resolved in clearness mp Il 08/02/2013 16:22, Daniel Bennett ha scritto: Ashok and all, On the seemingly neutral suggestion of approved and proposal , the United States has a document called the US Code which is mixed approved and explanatory text. And even though there is a bill and act difference, the US uses them in weird ways. I do like that Monica brings up the way of thinking about these issues which makes sense. But what may help is using an abstract model of each particular system with a mapping into AKN will help show how her thinking can best be represented and work for a particular jurisdiction. Daniel daniel@citizencontact.com On 2/8/2013 9:55 AM, Ashok Hariharan wrote: On 8 February 2013 02:31, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant,Finally: I propose you to define together a taxonomy/light-ontology/vocabulary (defined outside of the TC) concerning the nomenclature of the normative acts used in US and to link this taxonomy to the tag <act refersTo= #resolution > using refersTo. In this way you can use your ontology, the Chile its ontology in Spanish with their specific nomenclature, Italy as well its ontology in Italian. What do you think about this? The below note is from Flavio, since he couldnt reply to the mailing list  ( I agree too )  : Since we are talking about people I dare to step in. I do tend to agree with Grant. Monica in your response you may find possible generic terms : bill could become proposal , you wrote pre-proposal act could become approved ????? So I do agree with Grant that people get mislead by terms like bill/act that are loaded with specific meanings. Bill/act may not be the best way to represent the concepts of document proposal and document approved that are what Akoma Ntoso bill/act are about. Thank you. Flavio Il 07/02/2013 19:51, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However bill and act are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use bill for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and act for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that bill is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. bill is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future law in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly act includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term bill is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - Titles in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as acts -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================

Dear all, For me, the current terms are not problematic as they don't have special meaning inside the European legislation (we use "proposal", "draft" or "motion" to express the not approved text).  And act can be used for binding and not binding text. So, I don't have problem to say that a resolution is an act and a motion for resolution, a bill. But I understand the problem to use as generic term a concept that has a specific meaning in some tradition. Now, it is a big challenge to find a name for these element that has no specific meaning (i.e., "proposal" is not a good term as it has the meaning of "proposed by another institution that the proponent", in opposite of "draft".  So I have a problem to mark a draft as a proposal ;-) Pragmatically, If "act" or "bill" elements are generic, maybe they need to have an additional attribute 'name' like "doc" element to put the type of "act" or bill. Additionally, it could also be a good idea to standardize the metadata that are needed to qualify a document at a legislative point of view (type, proponent, ...). For the "European law", you have treaty, then directive, decision, recommendation and regulation At the level of the European parliament, there are resolution, decision and recommendation (not the same meaning as the previous one). For the Belgian legislation, we have the constitution, the code, loi, "décret", "arreté", "arrêté loi", arrêté ministériel, ... I don't think it is a good idea to have one tag by name. Kind regards Véronique De : legaldocml@lists.oasis-open.org [legaldocml@lists.oasis-open.org] de la part de Ashok Hariharan [ashok@parliaments.info] Date d'envoi : vendredi 8 février 2013 15:55 À : monica.palmirani Cc: Grant Vergottini; legaldocml@lists.oasis-open.org Objet : Re: [legaldocml] Bills and Acts On 8 February 2013 02:31, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant,Finally: I propose you to define together a taxonomy/light-ontology/vocabulary (defined outside of the TC) concerning the nomenclature of the normative acts used in US and to link this taxonomy to the tag <act refersTo="#resolution"> using refersTo. In this way you can use your ontology, the Chile its ontology in Spanish with their specific nomenclature, Italy as well its ontology in Italian. What do you think about this? The below note is from Flavio, since he couldnt reply to the mailing list  ( I agree too )  : Since we are talking about "people" I dare to step in. I do tend to agree with Grant. Monica in your response you may find possible "generic terms": "bill" could become "proposal", you wrote "pre-proposal" "act" could become "approved ?????" So I do agree with Grant that "people" get mislead by terms like "bill/act" that are "loaded" with specific meanings. "Bill/act" may not be the best way to represent the "concepts" of "document proposal" and "document approved" that are what Akoma Ntoso "bill/act" are about. Thank you. Flavio Il 07/02/2013 19:51, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: Hi Monica, Fabio, All,   I can understand the need to define the relevant concepts in the fewest possible terms. In fact, I have tried to do this always. And I still carry the battle scars from when I tried to use terms in an abstract way that were already well understood in a specific way. This simply did not fly. In my experience, people are extraordinarily sensitive to overusing terms for which they have a very precise definition.   It's quite acceptable to define a very general term for an abstract concept if that general term has no pre-existing meaning. But as soon as you hijack an existing term, they come to the meeting armed with whatever force they feel necessary to slay your proposal in its entirety. You're doomed from the very start. I believe that will also happen to Akoma Ntoso too.  Here is why:   1) You cannot call a resolution that does not propose law a bill. A resolution is most often a statement or an opinion made by the legislative body. Calling it a bill brings with it the notion that it is proposing law and, upon approval, will become a law. Certainly, there are cases where a resolution does propose law - such as a US joint resolution. But this is the exception rather than the rule. What about a California Constitutional Amendment? It proposes an amendment to the constitution and is thus regarded as a resolution - put forth to the people of the state, suggesting a modification to the Constitution. It is not considered a bill. When it is adopted, it causes the creation of a proposition to the people - a separate document. It takes successful passage of the proposition for the law to change.   2) You cannot call an initiative by the people, proposing law, a bill. A bill is usually defined as a law proposed by a legislative body. An initiative is not a bill in that it comes from the people rather than from the legislative body. Calling it a bill misplaces its source of origin.   3) You cannot refer to non-positive titles of the US Code as acts. You can call a non-positive title of the US Code a lot of things, but you most definitely cannot call it an act. It was not enacted - and that is an extremely important point. Without enactment, it is only evidence of the law rather than law itself. The entire purpose of the codification of the US Code into positive law is to deal with this important characteristic. I cannot and will not suggest modeling a non-positive title in the US Code using an <act> tag.  It would be less controversial to suggest the non-sensical <automobile> tag.   I think you have to look at the meanings that the words like bill and act bring with them. They are not abstract terms. They have preexisting meanings and meddling with those meanings will only incite quarrels which will lead to the rejection rather than adoption of the standard.   I bring this up as I have tried to deal with this issue too many times in the past and have only found that the only way forward is to either accept a broader vocabulary or to choose a vocabulary unencumbered with existing meaning.   -Grant On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM, monica.palmirani < monica.palmirani@unibo.it > wrote: Dear Grant, I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks. However "bill" and "act" are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts. In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world. So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use "bill" for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and "act" for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority. Take also in consideration that "bill" is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. "bill" is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future "law" in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system. Similarly "act" includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-) They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition. It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole. I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon. Cheers, Monica Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto: There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap. The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience: Proposed legislation: =============== Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law.   - Bills  - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.) Sometime the term "bill" is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language.  Enacted Law: ========== Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:  - Acts  - Statutes  - Ordinances  - Codes  - "Titles" in the case of the US Code  - Constitution These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as "acts" -- Grant ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ==================================== -- ____________________________________________________________________ Grant Vergottini Xcential Group, LLC. email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com phone: 858.361.6738 -- =================================== Associate professor of Legal Informatics School of Law Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna C.I.R.S.F.I.D. http://www.cirsfid.unibo.it/ Palazzo Dal Monte Gaudenzi - Via Galliera, 3 I - 40121 BOLOGNA (ITALY) Tel +39 051 277217 Fax +39 051 260782 E-mail monica.palmirani@unibo.it ====================================