LOF-ODP-001: Legal Act and Legal Document¶
| Identifier | LOF-ODP-001 |
| IRI | https://w3id.org/lof/odp-001.owl |
| Repository | https://github.com/legal-ontologies-foundry/lof-odp-001 |
| Status | draft |
| Version | 0.1.0 |
| Drafted by | David R. Koepsell |
| For review by | William Mandrick, Barry Smith |
Draft for review
First draft, prepared for discussion by the founding coordinators. Open questions are listed at the end.
Intent¶
Legal information systems routinely use one word for three different things. "The lease" may mean the signing that took place on 1 March, the terms the parties agreed to, or the stapled pages in a drawer. These differ in kind: the signing is over, the terms persist, and the pages can be burned without the terms ceasing to bind. This pattern separates the legal act, the legal content it establishes, and the legal documents that carry that content, so that every other Foundry pattern can refer to them unambiguously.
Competency questions¶
- Which legal act established this legal content, and when?
- Which persons or organizations participated in that act?
- Under what pre-existing legal content (an enabling statute, a procedural rule) was the act performed?
- Which documents carry this legal content?
- Do these two documents carry the same legal content?
Solution¶
Classes¶
| Label | IRI | BFO parent | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| legal act | ODP001_0001000 |
process | A process, having one or more persons or organizations as participants, that a legal system recognizes as bringing into being, modifying, or terminating legally significant entities. |
| legal content | ODP001_0001001 |
generically dependent continuant | A generically dependent continuant that is established by some legal act and that specifies legally significant entities, such as the provisions of a statute, the terms of a contract, or the holding of a judgment. |
| legal document | ODP001_0001002 |
material entity | A material entity that is the carrier of some legal content. |
| enactment | ODP001_0001003 |
legal act | A legal act in which a body with legislative authority establishes legal content of general application. |
| contract formation | ODP001_0001004 |
legal act | A legal act in which two or more parties establish legal content that binds them to one another. |
Relations¶
| Label | IRI | Domain | Range | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| establishes | ODP001_0001100 |
legal act | legal content | A relation between a legal act and the legal content that comes into being through that act. |
| established by | ODP001_0001101 |
legal content | legal act | Inverse of establishes. |
| performed under | ODP001_0001102 |
legal act | legal content | A relation between a legal act and pre-existing legal content that authorizes or governs it. |
The pattern reuses BFO has participant (BFO:0000057) for the parties to an act and BFO is carrier of (BFO:0000101) between a document and its content.
Axioms (Manchester syntax)¶
legal act SubClassOf process and (has participant some material entity)
legal content SubClassOf generically dependent continuant
legal document SubClassOf material entity and (is carrier of some legal content)
enactment SubClassOf legal act and (establishes some legal content)
contract formation SubClassOf legal act and (establishes some legal content)
enactment DisjointWith contract formation
Grounding rationale (LOF-P-004)¶
- Legal act as process. A signing, a vote, or the delivery of a judgment unfolds in time and has temporal parts. It is over once it is complete, while what it brings about persists.
- Legal content as generically dependent continuant. The same statute exists in the official gazette, in every printed code, and on every server that stores it, and it survives the destruction of any one copy. That is the defining feature of a generically dependent continuant.
- Legal document as material entity. The particular signed paper, or the particular stored file, is a material thing that carries the content. Digital documents are treated as patterns in material storage media.
Example¶
The signing of a residential lease (hypothetical parties):
ex:leaseSigning a odp1:0001004 ; # contract formation
obo:BFO_0000057 ex:ana , ex:northside ; # has participant
odp1:0001100 ex:leaseTerms ; # establishes
odp1:0001102 ex:tenantCode . # performed under
ex:leaseTerms a odp1:0001001 . # legal content
ex:copyHeldByAna a odp1:0001002 ; obo:BFO_0000101 ex:leaseTerms .
ex:copyHeldByNorthside a odp1:0001002 ; obo:BFO_0000101 ex:leaseTerms .
The two copies are distinct material entities carrying one and the same
legal content. The full example is in
lof-odp-003/src/examples/lease-example.ttl.
Alignment with legal standards (LOF-P-015)¶
| This pattern | Akoma Ntoso / ELI (FRBR-derived) | IAO |
|---|---|---|
| legal content | Work and Expression levels | information content entity (IAO:0000030), close match |
| legal document | Item level | none. IAO document (IAO:0000310) is an information content entity, and so corresponds to legal content |
| legal act | lifecycle events | none |
Consequences and limitations¶
- The pattern does not distinguish versions of legal content (an amended statute versus the original). The FRBR Work and Expression distinction collapses here into a single class, which is a deliberate simplification for a first pattern.
- Legal act requires at least one participant. Acts by operation of law with no human participant, if there are any, fall outside it.
- Enactment and contract formation are illustrative subclasses. Domain ontologies will add many more (adjudication, conveyance, delegation).
Open questions for the founding coordinators¶
- Should the Foundry import IAO and place legal content under IAO information content entity, rather than directly under generically dependent continuant with a mapping? Importing IAO increases interoperability with OBO, at the cost of an extra dependency.
- Should the Work and Expression distinction be modeled in this pattern, or deferred to a later versioning pattern?
- Is the treatment of digital documents as patterns in material media acceptable, or does it need a pattern of its own?
Related patterns¶
- LOF-ODP-002 uses legal act for role conferral and termination.
- LOF-ODP-003 grounds legal positions in legal content, and relates powers to the legal acts in which they are exercised.