Ginevra Peruginelli

Searching and retrieving legal literature through automated semantic indexing

Access to legal information and, in particular, to legal literature is examined in conjunction with the creation of a Portal to Italian legal doctrine. The design and implementation of services such as integrated access to a wide range of resources are described, with a particular focus on the importance of exploiting metadata assigned to disparate legal material. The integration of structured repositories and Web documents is the main purpose of the Portal: it is constructed on the basis of a federation system with service provider functions, aiming at creating a centralized index of legal resources. The index is based on a uniform metadata view created for structured data by means of the OAI approach and for Web documents by a machine learning approach. Subject searching is a major requirement for legal literature users and a solution based on the exploitation of Dublin Core metadata, as well as the use of legal ontologies and related terms prepared for accessing indexed articles have been implemented.

Integrated access to legal literature through automated semantic classification

Access to legal information and, in particular, to legal literature is examined for the creation of a search and retrieval system for Italian legal literature. The design and implementation of services such as integrated access to a wide range of resources are described, with a particular focus on the importance of exploiting metadata assigned to disparate legal material. The integration of structured repositories and Web documents is the main purpose of the system: it is constructed on the basis of a federation system with service provider functions, aiming at creating a centralized index of legal resources. The index is based on a uniform metadata view created for structured data by means of the OAI approach and for Web documents by a machine learning approach, which, in this paper, has been assessed as regards document classification. Semantic searching is a major requirement for legal literature users and a solution based on the exploitation of Dublin Core metadata, as well as the use of legal ontologies and related terms prepared for accessing indexed articles have been implemented.

A Semantic Approach to Support Cross Border e-Justice

The possibility to file and exchange legal procedures between European Member States is essential to increase cross-border relations in a pan-European e-Justice area. In this paper an overview of the e-Delivery platform developed within the e-CODEX project, as well as the semantic solution conceived to transmit business documents within a scenario characterized by different languages and different legal systems, are described.

Research Quality Evaluation: The Case of Legal Studies

Among SSH, legal studies create difficult challenges for the evaluation process. Legal scholarship is based on systematic analysis of legislation and jurisprudence, using a hermeneutic and logical approach that usually leads to a variety of formulations. Consequently the practices of citation have a different epistemic meaning than in STEM disciplines. Over time differences in interpretation consolidate in schools and research traditions. In light of the international literature on research assessment in Law, the chapter examines the main issues at stake. While bibliometrics are usually rejected, a number of criteria used in peer review are recommended.

Semantic Interoperability among Thesauri: A Challenge in the Multicultural Legal Domain

In the last few years crucial issues like cross-language legal information retrieval, document classification, legal knowledge discovery and extraction have been considered in theory and in practice. The availability of services allowing cross-language and cross-collection retrieval is a growing necessity. This paper focuses on the need to develop solutions for automatic, language-independent procedures to provide interoperability between mono/poly-lingual thesauri at national and European levels. This will guarantee sustainable and scalable services enabling to manage the multilingual complexity of the European Union legal context to be used for cross-language and cross-collection legal information retrieval. Wider use of the service can also be envisaged as support to legal translation services, as well as in general to promote integration and sharing of widespread and heterogeneous legal resources, providing new market opportunities for stakeholders to exploit the economic potential of public sector information in a multilanguage environment.

A Survey on Legal Research Monograph Evaluation in Italy

The chapter presents an original survey carried out in 2015 on legal research monographs evaluation. The target respondents were the Italian legal community. The rate of answers was quite high (taking into account a low level of national responses to mail or web surveys), reaching 26% of all professors and researchers. The survey examines in detail the criteria of research quality adopted by legal scholars. It also delivers a number of recommendations with respect to peer review, journal classification, and other evaluation practice.

Online Publication of Court Decisions in Europe

Although nowadays most courts publish decisions on the internet, substantial differences exist between European countries regarding such publication. These differences not only pertain to the extent with which judgments are published and anonymised, but also to their metadata, searchability and reusability. This article, written by Marc van Opijnen, Ginevra Peruginelli, Eleni Kefali and Monica Palmirani, contains a synthesis of a comprehensive comparative study on the publication of court decisions within all Member States of the European Union. Specific attention is paid on the legal and policy frameworks governing case law publication, actual practices, data protection issues, Open Data policies as well as the state of play regarding the implementation of the European Case Law Identifier.

Law Belongs to the People: Access to Law and Justice

This paper written by Ginevra Peruginelli is devoted to a discussion of the issues concerning the provision of free access to law in our global society and investigates the effects and benefits of freely available information to the legal profession, citizens and governments. The knowledge of rights, responsibilities and policies allows people and institutions to know what is expected of them and which protections they enjoy. In particular, the paper focuses on the main actors, namely the Legal Information Institutes, involved in the free access to law all around the world. These institutions publish legal information from more than one source for free, and mutually collaborate both politically and technically through membership.

Conceptual Modeling of Judicial Procedures inźthe e-Codex Project

Simplification of judicial procedures management and the possibility to file and exchange them between European Member States are essential pre-conditions to increase cross-border relations in a pan-European e-Justice area. In this paper an overview of the e-Delivery platform architecture, developed by the e-CODEX project, as well as the semantic solution conceived to transmit business documents within a scenario characterized by different languages and different legal systems, are described. A proposal for implementating such solution with semantic web technologies is described.

An open access policy for legal informatics dissemination and sharing

Scholarly communication is facing great changes due to the revolution of digital technology and the raising of new economic models for academic publishing. In the legal domain, in particular, these changes affect a scenario dominated by a rigid and centralized control of information by a few large commercial publishers. This paper analyses these changes, proposing a road map for providing a digital publishing service for legal information materials based on Open Access policies and technological implementations.