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LOF-ODP-002: Legal Role Conferral
Identifier LOF-ODP-002
IRI https://w3id.org/lof/odp-002.owl
Repository https://github.com/legal-ontologies-foundry/lof-odp-002
Status draft
Version 0.1.0
Depends on LOF-ODP-001
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

A great deal of law is about who occupies which legal role: judge, trustee, executor, guardian, tenant, director. Roles are acquired and lost through legal acts (appointments, contracts, removals, resignations), and they are specified by legal content (the statute creating an office, the lease clause defining the tenant's position). This pattern models legal roles as BFO roles and connects them to the acts that confer and terminate them, and to the content that specifies them.

Competency questions

  1. Which legal roles does this person or organization currently bear?
  2. Which legal act conferred this role, and under what legal content?
  3. Which legal act terminated this role?
  4. Which legal content specifies what this role consists in?
  5. Which of a person's legal roles arose by operation of law rather than by a conferring act?

Solution

Classes

Label IRI BFO parent Definition
legal role ODP002_0001000 role A role that inheres in a person or organization in virtue of some legal act or legal content, and that is realized in processes having legal significance.
conferred legal role ODP002_0001001 legal role (defined) A legal role that was brought into existence by some legal act.
role conferral act ODP002_0001002 legal act (defined) A legal act that brings some legal role into existence in some bearer.
role termination act ODP002_0001003 legal act (defined) A legal act that brings some legal role to an end.

Relations

Label IRI Domain Range Definition
confers ODP002_0001100 legal act legal role A relation between a legal act and a legal role that comes into existence through that act.
conferred by ODP002_0001101 legal role legal act Inverse of confers.
terminates ODP002_0001102 legal act legal role A relation between a legal act and a legal role that ceases to exist through that act.
specified by ODP002_0001103 legal role legal content A relation between a legal role and legal content that specifies what the role consists in.

The pattern reuses BFO inheres in (BFO:0000197) between a role and its bearer, and BFO realizes (BFO:0000055) between a process and the role it realizes.

Axioms (Manchester syntax)

legal role  SubClassOf  role and (inheres in some material entity)
conferred legal role  EquivalentTo  legal role and (conferred by some legal act)
role conferral act    EquivalentTo  legal act and (confers some legal role)
role termination act  EquivalentTo  legal act and (terminates some legal role)

The last three are defined classes, so the reasoner classifies instances automatically. In the worked example, the lease signing is asserted only to be a contract formation that confers a tenant role; the reasoner infers that it is a role conferral act, and that the tenant role is a conferred legal role.

Grounding rationale (LOF-P-004)

A person becomes a trustee, or ceases to be one, without any change in their physical make-up. The role exists because of external circumstances (an instrument, an appointment, a court order). That is the defining feature of a BFO role, as opposed to a disposition, which is grounded in the bearer's physical make-up.

Example

ex:anaTenantRole a odp2:0001000 ;        # legal role
    obo:BFO_0000197 ex:ana ;             # inheres in
    odp2:0001101 ex:leaseSigning ;       # conferred by
    odp2:0001103 ex:leaseTerms .         # specified by

Inferred: ex:anaTenantRole is a conferred legal role; ex:leaseSigning is a role conferral act.

Compatible with role modeling in the Common Core Ontologies and with the agent-role distinction in LKIF-Core, but grounded directly in BFO role. Akoma Ntoso's TLCRole and TLCPerson references can be mapped to legal role and its bearer.

Consequences and limitations

  • Roles arising by operation of law (a parent's guardianship of a newborn) are legal roles but not conferred legal roles. The pattern does not yet model what brings them into existence.
  • The pattern does not state that the bearer of a conferred role participates in the conferring act. That is often true (a signing) and sometimes false (an appointment by letter), so it is left to domain ontologies.
  • Offices that persist through changes of holder (the office of Chief Justice, as opposed to a particular person's role as Chief Justice) are not modeled. This is the most significant gap.

Open questions for the founding coordinators

  1. Offices. Should the Foundry model an office as something distinct from the roles of its successive holders? If so, is an office a generically dependent continuant specified by legal content, of which each holder's role is a concretization?
  2. Should legal role be required to be specified by some legal content, making the link to the law mandatory rather than optional?
  3. How should roles borne by organizations be treated, given that BFO has no settled account of organizations?
  • LOF-ODP-001 supplies legal act and legal content.
  • LOF-ODP-003: the power to confer a role is a second-order legal position, exercised in a role conferral act.

Discussion