LOF-P-015: Alignment with existing legal standards

Draft for ratification

Part of the founding draft of the LOF principles.

Summary

The ontology documents its relationship to established legal information standards.

Purpose

Legal information already circulates in established formats. Documented mappings let Foundry ontologies annotate that data rather than compete with it.

Recommendations and requirements

1. Where a relevant standard exists (for example Akoma Ntoso, LegalRuleML, LKIF, ELI, ECLI), the README states whether and how the ontology maps to it.
2. Term-level mappings, where provided, use skos:exactMatch, skos:closeMatch, skos:broadMatch, or skos:narrowMatch, or a SSSOM mapping file.
3. Mappings are not asserted as logical equivalences unless the ontological commitments have been checked.

Implementation

Keep mappings in a separate SSSOM file under src/mappings/ when they are numerous.

Examples

A class for judgments mapped to the Akoma Ntoso judgment document type with skos:closeMatch.

Criteria for review

Relevant standards are identified, and mappings use the appropriate SKOS strength.

Automated check: None. Manual review.

Feedback and discussion

Propose changes to this principle by pull request against docs/principles/lof-p-015-standards.md, or open a thread in Discussions.

Discussion