LOF-P-010: Jurisdictional transparency

Draft for ratification

Part of the founding draft of the LOF principles.

Summary

Classes specific to a legal system or jurisdiction are marked as such and are not presented as universal.

Purpose

Legal categories vary across systems. A class that silently generalizes from one jurisdiction ("consideration" in common-law contract, say) misrepresents others and produces false inferences when data from several systems is combined.

Recommendations and requirements

1. The registry entry lists the jurisdictions or legal traditions in scope (jurisdictions), or general if the ontology claims generality.
2. Classes restricted to particular jurisdictions carry a dcterms:coverage annotation naming them.
3. Claims of cross-jurisdictional generality are supported by documentation.

Implementation

Use jurisdiction identifiers in the form ISO 3166 country codes or named traditions (for example, common-law, civil-law), and be consistent within the ontology.

Examples

A class consideration annotated with dcterms:coverage "common-law".

Criteria for review

Jurisdiction-specific classes are annotated. The ontology's generality claims are plausible given its sources.

Automated check: None. Manual review.

Feedback and discussion

Propose changes to this principle by pull request against docs/principles/lof-p-010-jurisdiction.md, or open a thread in Discussions.

Discussion