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Lupo (CNIPA) 5 April 2, 2010 7 A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 8 for Sources of Law (LEX) 9 draft-spinosa-urn-lex-01.txt 11 Status of this Memo 13 This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the 14 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 16 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 17 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that 18 other groups may also distribute working documents as 19 Internet-Drafts. 21 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 22 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 23 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 24 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 26 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 27 http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html 29 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 30 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html 32 This Internet-Draft will expire on October 4, 2010. 34 Copyright Notice 36 Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 37 document authors. All rights reserved. 39 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 40 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents 41 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of 42 publication of this document. Please review these documents 43 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect 44 to this document. 46 Abstract 47 This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 48 Identification (NID) convention as prescribed by the World Wide Web 49 Consortium (W3C) for identifying, naming, assigning, and managing 50 persistent resources in the legal domain. 52 Table of Contents 54 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 55 1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 56 1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 57 1.3 The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 58 1.4 General Characteristics of the System . . . . . . . . . . . 7 59 1.5 Linking a "lex" Name to a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 60 1.6 Use of "lex" Names in References . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 61 1.7 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 62 1.8 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 63 2 Specification Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 64 2.1 Namespace ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 65 2.2 Registration Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 66 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 67 2.4 Identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 68 3 General Syntax of the "lex" Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 69 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters . . . . . . . . . . . 11 70 3.2 Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 71 3.3 Case sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 72 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs . . . . . . . . . 12 73 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 13 74 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 75 3.7 Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 76 3.8 Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 77 3.9 Ordinal Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 78 4 Creation of the Source of Law "lex" Identifier . . . . . . . . 14 79 4.1 Basic Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 80 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation . . . . . . . . . 14 81 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 82 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level . . . 15 83 4.5 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 84 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 17 85 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation 86 Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 87 4.8 Sources of Law References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 88 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment . . . . . . . . . . 20 89 5.1 Specifying the element of the URN "lex" . 20 90 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment . . . . . . 20 91 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 92 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations . . . . . . . . . . 21 93 6 Principles of the Resolution Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 94 6.1 The General Architecture of the System . . . . . . . . . 22 95 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 96 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 97 7 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 98 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 99 7.2 Validation mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 100 7.3 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 101 7.4 Namespace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 102 7.5 Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 103 7.6 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 104 7.7 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 105 8 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 106 8.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 107 8.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 108 9 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 109 10 Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 110 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of 111 the "lex" namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 112 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level . 33 113 B1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 114 B1.1 Indication of the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 115 B1.2 Multiple Issuers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 116 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 117 B1.4 Indication of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 118 B1.5 Indication of the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 119 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 120 B2 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 121 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure . . . 34 122 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure . . . . . . 35 123 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative 124 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 125 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases . 35 126 B3 The
element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 127 B3.1 Indication of the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 128 B3.2 Multiple Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 129 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 130 B3.4 Multiple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 131 B4 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 132 B4.1 Formal Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 133 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 134 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 135 Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 136 C1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 137 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document . . . . . . 39 138 C1.2 Identification of the Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 140 1 Introduction 142 1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" 144 The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign an unequivocal 145 identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law. 146 The identifier is conceived so that its construction depends only on 147 the characteristics of the document itself and is, therefore, 148 independent from the document's on-line availability, its physical 149 location, and access mode. 150 "Sources of law" include any legal document within the domain of 151 legislation (including bills), case law and administrative acts or 152 regulations. 153 This identifier will be used as a way to represent the references 154 (and more generally, any type of relation) among the various sources 155 of law. In an on-line environment with resources distributed among 156 different Web publishers, uniform resource names allow simplified 157 global interconnection of legal documents by means of automated 158 hypertext linking. 160 1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard 162 The following entities support this proposal: 164 - ITTIG/CNR (Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of 165 the Italian National Research Council) - Italy; 166 - CNIPA (National Centre for ICT in Public Administration) - Italy; 167 - PRODASEN - IT Department of the Federal Senate - Brazil; 168 - LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - USA 170 1.3 The Context 172 In the last few years a number of initiatives have arisen in the 173 field of legal document management. 175 Since 2001 the Italian Government, through the CNIPA (National 176 Authority for Information Technology in the Public Administration), 177 the Ministry of Justice and ITTIG-CNR (the Institute of Legal 178 Information Theory and Techniques of the Italian National Research 179 Council) promoted the NormeInRete project. It was aimed at 180 introducing standards for sources of law description and 181 identification using XML and URN techniques. 183 Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for the 184 description of legal sources [FRAN]: for example the Metalex project, 185 promoted by the University of Amsterdam and adopted by the Dutch Tax 186 and Customs Administration, the Belgian Public Centers for Welfare 187 and others; LexDania project in Denmark supported by the Danish 188 Ministry of Justice; CHLexML in Switzerland developed by COPIUR, the 189 Coordination Office for the Electronic Publication of Legal Data 190 Federal Office of Justice; eLaw in Austria mainly coordinated by the 191 Austrian Parliament. 193 Such initiatives, based in synergies between government, national 194 research institutes, and universities, have defined national XML 195 standards for legal document management, as well as schemes for legal 196 document identification. 198 Outside Europe, similar initiatives have faced similar problems. For 199 example, the Brazilian Senate carried out a feasibility study to 200 provide unique and transparent identifiers to sources of law on the 201 basis of the IFLA-FRBR model. 202 Similarly, the Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented 203 Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and 204 Ontologies) project provides a set of guidelines for e-Parliament 205 services in a Pan-African context by proposing an XML document schema 206 providing sophisticated description possibilities for several 207 Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary 208 records, etc.). 209 Finally, the Tasmanian Government provided advanced legislative 210 information services through the EnAct project. It gave searchable 211 consolidated Tasmanian legislation by automating much of the 212 legislative drafting and consolidation process, as well as using SGML 213 document representation. Numerous less-visible efforts in the United 214 States and elsewhere have struggled with similar issues. 216 Several of these identifiers are based on a URN schema. The first 217 national standard was defined in Italy within the NormeInRete 218 project; to this the Danish LexDania and the Brazilian Lexml standard 219 followed. Hungary, Slovenia and Switzerland expressed their interest 220 in URN identifier for legislation as well. All these standards have a 221 common internal structure, regarding both the hierarchy and the 222 elements content. 224 In today's information society the processes of political, social and 225 economic integration of European Union member states as well as the 226 increasing integration of the world-wide legal and economic processes 227 are causing a growing interest in exchanging legal information 228 knowledge at national and trans-national levels. 229 The growing desire for improved quality and accessibility of legal 230 information amplifies the need for interoperability among legal 231 information systems across national boundaries. A common open 232 standard used to identify sources of law at international level is an 233 essential prerequisite for interoperability. 235 Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their 236 intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique. 237 The need for a unequivocal identifier of sources of law in different 238 EU Member States, based on open standards and able to provide 239 advanced modalities of document hyper-linking, has been expressed in 240 several conferences by representatives of the Office for Official 241 Publications of the European Communities (OPOCE), with the aim of 242 promoting interoperability among national and European institution 243 information systems. Similar concerns have been raised by 244 international groups concerned with free access to legal information, 245 and the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private 246 International Law is considering a resolution that would encourage 247 member states to "adopt neutral methods of citation of their legal 248 materials, including methods that are medium-neutral, provider- 249 neutral and internationally consistent". In a similar direction the 250 CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at European level, towards the 251 definition of a standard interchange format for sources of law, 252 including recommendations for defining naming conventions to them. 253 The "urn:lex" naming convention has interpreted all these 254 recommendations, proposing an original solution for sources of law 255 identification. 257 1.4 General Characteristics of the System 259 Registrants wish now to promote interoperability among legal 260 information systems by the definition of a namespace convention and 261 structure that will create and manage identifiers for legal 262 documents. The identifiers will be: 263 - globally unique 264 - transparent 265 - persistent 266 - location-independent, and 267 - language-neutral. 268 These qualities will facilitate legal document management as well as 269 provide a mechanism of stable cross-collections and cross-country 270 references. 271 Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that will 272 promote adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to 273 official-language requirements. The proposed standard will provide 274 useful guidance to both public and private groups that create, 275 promulgate, and publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize 276 the potential for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, while 277 preserving sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document types 278 and to respect the need for local control of collections by an 279 equally diverse assortment of administrative entities. 281 As usual, the problem is to provide the right amount guidance at the 282 core of the standard while providing sufficient flexibility to cover 283 a wide variety of needs. The proposed "lex" standard does this by 284 splitting the identifier into parts. The first part uses a 285 predetermined standard ("country/jurisdiction name standard") to 286 specify the country (or more generally the jurisdiction) of origin 287 for the legal document being identified; the remainder ("local name") 288 is intended for local use in identifying documents issued in that 289 country or jurisdiction. This second part depends only on sources of 290 law identification system operating in that nation and it is mainly 291 composed by a formalized information related to the enacting 292 authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly the annex. 294 The identification system based on uniform names MUST include: 295 - a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously 296 any source of law (legislation, case law and administrative acts), 297 issued by any authority (national, regional and local) at any time 298 (past, present and future); 299 - a resolution mechanism - in a distributed environment - that ties a 300 uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding 301 resources. 302 This document only considers the first of these requirements. It also 303 contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution 304 service and to the corresponding software. 306 1.5 Linking a "lex" Name to a Document 308 The "lex" name is linked to the document through meta-information 309 which may be specified: 310 - internally to the document itself through a specific element within 311 an XML schema or by an HTML META tag; 312 - externally by means of an RDF triple, a specific attribute in a 313 database, etc. 314 One of these modalities is necessary for enabling automated 315 construction and updating of catalogues (distributed and centralized) 316 and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name 317 of a document with its physical location(s). The standard assumes no 318 particular relationship between the originator of the document, its 319 publisher, and the implementer of catalogues or resolution services. 320 They may be the same entity, or not. 322 1.6 Use of "lex" Names in References 324 "lex" names will be used on a large scale in references as a HREF 325 attribute value of the hypertext link to the referred document. 326 This link can be created in two ways: 327 - by manually inserting, in the referring document, the link with the 328 uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure especially for 329 documents that are already on-line; 330 - by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily) 331 the link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a 332 text: this is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a 333 certain percentage of errors, since references are not always 334 accurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless be 335 acceptable for already published documents. 336 In any case, whatever the method adopted is, new documents produced 337 in XML format compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema, SHOULD 338 express references through the uniform name of the document referred 339 to. 341 1.7 Definitions 343 According to this document, the following terms are used in the 344 following meaning: 345 - Source of Law: 346 is a general concept, and may be used to refer to legislation, case 347 law, regulations and administrative acts. In its broadest sense, 348 the source of law is anything that can be conceived of as the 349 originator of legal rules; 350 - Registrar: 351 is an organization which shares and defines in any country or 352 jurisdiction the assignment of the main components of the resource 353 identifier through which its uniqueness is guaranteed. This task 354 includes the definition of possible jurisdiction unit and the 355 primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure) of 356 uniform name, according to the characteristics of its own state or 357 institution organization. 359 1.8 Terminology 361 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 362 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 363 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 365 2 Specification Template 367 2.1 Namespace ID 369 "lex" requested according to [RFC3406]. 371 2.2 Registration Information 373 Version Number: 1.0 374 Date: 2009-07-01 376 Declared registrant of the namespace: 378 Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG) 379 Italian National Research Council (CNR) 380 Via de' Barucci, 20 381 50127 Florence 382 Italy 384 e-mail: lex@ittig.cnr.it 386 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document 388 This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is 389 based on the BNF (Backus-Naur Form) meta-language. In particular: 390 - elements are included between angle brackets ("<" and ">"); 391 - an element is separated from its specification by the string "::="; 392 - alternative elements are separated from each other by a vertical 393 slash ("|"); 394 - character strings are enclosed in quotes (" and "); 395 - optional parts are enclosed by square brackets ("[" and "]"); 396 - a group of elements is enclosed by round brackets ("(" and ")"); 397 - a symbol or an expression following an element or a group of 398 elements indicates a factor of repetition, and, as in the regular 399 expressions, takes the following formats: 400 - ? : 0 or 1 time; 401 - + : 1 or more times; 402 - * : 0 or more times; 403 - {n} : times; 404 - {n,m}: from to times. 406 2.4 Identifier structure 408 The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows: 410 "urn:lex:" 412 where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows: 414 ::=":" 416 where: 418 is the part providing the identification of the 419 jurisdiction, generally corresponding to the country, where the 420 source of law is issued. It is also possible to represent 421 international organizations (either states or public administrations 422 or private entities); 424 is the uniform name of the source of law in the country 425 or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal structure is common 426 to the already adopted schemas. It is able to represent all the 427 aspects of an intellectual production, as it is a legal document, 428 from its initial idea, through its evolution during the time, to its 429 realisation by different means (paper, digital, etc.). 431 The element is composed of two specific fields: 433 ::=[";"]* 435 where: 437 is the identification code of the country where 438 the source of law is issued. This code follows the standard [ISO3166] 439 Alpha-2 (it=Italy, fr=France, dk=Denmark, etc.). In case of multi- 440 national (e.g., European Union) or international (e.g., United 441 Nations, Free Software Foundation) organizations the Top Level Domain 442 Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain Name (e.g., un.org, wto.int) is used 443 instead of ISO 3166 code; 445 are the possible administrative hierarchical sub- 446 structures defined by each country or organisation according to its 447 own legal system. This additional information can be used where two 448 or more levels of legislative or judicial production exist (e.g., 449 federal, state and municipality level) and the same bodies may be 450 present in each jurisdiction. Then acts of the same type issued by 451 similar authorities in different areas differ for the jurisdiction- 452 unit specification. An example can be the following: 453 "br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government), 454 "br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of SU+00E3o Paulo state) and 455 "br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo: decreto" (decree of Campinas 456 municipality). 458 Examples of law sources identifiers are: 460 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456 (Italian act) 461 urn:lex:fr:etat:lois:2004-12-06;321 (French act) 462 urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123 (Spanish act) 463 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 (Glarus Swiss Canton 464 decree) 465 urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-UE (EU Council 466 Directive) 467 urn:lex:us:federal.supreme.court:decision:1963-03-18;372.us.335 (US 468 FSC decision) 470 3 General Syntax of the "lex" Identifier 472 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters 474 These characters are defined in accordance with the [RFC2141] "URN 475 Syntax". For various reasons, later explained, in the "lex" 476 only a sub-set of characters is allowed. All other characters are 477 either eliminated or converted. 479 For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please 480 see Attachment A. 482 3.2 Reserved Characters 484 These characters MUST always and uniquely be used for the assigned 485 purpose. 486 The first category includes those characters bearing a specific 487 meaning in the general creation of the URI (Uniform Resource 488 Identifier)[RFC3986]: 490 "%" "/" "?" "#" 492 The following characters instead are reserved in the specific "lex" 493 namespace: 495 - "@" separator of the expression, that contains information on 496 version and language; 497 - "$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on 498 format, editor, etc.; 499 - ":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity; 500 - ";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an 501 element at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a 502 specification; 503 - "+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g., 504 multiple authorities); 505 - "," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the 506 main elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g., 507 multiple numbers); 508 - "*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions. 510 3.3 Case sensitivity 512 The specific name of the URN, as with URLs, is case-sensitive. 513 Since the case does not change the logical identification of the 514 source of law, the names belonging to the "lex" namespace are 515 considered functionally equivalent independently from the case. To 516 take advantage of memory caching, the specific name is always created 517 in lower case. 518 (e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry") 520 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs 522 In order to keep editing and communication more simple and to avoid 523 character percent-encoding, it is strongly recommended that national 524 characters and diacritic signs are turned into base characters (e.g., 525 the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" converted into "sanita", the French 526 term "ministU+00E8re" converted into "ministere"). Otherwise, the 527 characters have to be percent-encoded according to the UTF-8 528 character encoding [STD63] (e.g., "sanitU+00E0" encoded into 529 "sanit%C3%A1"). 530 Anyway each country or jurisdiction decides the uniform names 531 encoding modality of all the sources of law issued within its 532 territory. 534 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 536 All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.), 537 the punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes, 538 dashes, etc.) are eliminated. The words left are connected each other 539 by a dot (".") which substitutes the "space". 540 (e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning" 541 becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning") 543 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion 545 All abbreviations indicating institutions (e.g., Min.), structures 546 (e.g., Dept.), or legal measures (e.g., reg.), MUST be expanded. 547 (e.g., "Min." must be reported as "ministry") 549 3.7 Acronyms 551 The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in 552 uniform names (the same acronym may indicate two different 553 institutions or structures), therefore their expansion is strongly 554 recommended. 555 (e.g., "FAO" is to be expanded as "food.agriculture.organization") 557 3.8 Date Format 559 Dates are expressed by numbers in the ISO-8601 format: 561 yyyy-mm-dd 563 (e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02") 565 3.9 Ordinal Numbers 567 Any ordinal number in a document (e.g., in the description of an 568 institution body) MUST be indicated in Arabic numerals, regardless to 569 the original expression: whether in Roman numerals, or with an 570 adjective, or in Arabic numeral with apex, etc. (IV, third, 1U+00B0, 571 2^, etc.). 573 (e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4") 575 4 Creation of the Source of Law "lex" Identifier 577 4.1 Basic Principles 579 The uniform name must identify one and only one document and is 580 created in such a way that it is: 581 - self-explanatory ; 582 - identifiable through simple and clear rules; 583 - compatible with the practice commonly used for references; 584 - able to be created by references in the text, automatically (by 585 parser) or manually; 586 - representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of 587 the document. 589 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation 591 According to FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) 592 model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library 593 Associations and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any 594 intellectual production, 4 fundamental entities (or aspects) can be 595 specified. 597 The first 2 entities reflect its contents: 598 - work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it 599 identifies a source of law both in its being (as it has been issued 600 or proposed) and in its becoming (as it is modified over time); 601 - expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a 602 work; in our case it identifies every different (original or up-to- 603 date) version of the act over time and/or language in which the 604 text is expressed; 605 while the other 2 entities relate to its form: 606 - manifestation: identifies a concrete realisation of an expression; 607 in our case it identifies realizations in different media 608 (printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.), or 609 other publishing characteristics; 610 - item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case it 611 identifies individual physical copies as they are found in 612 particular physical locations. 614 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name 616 The of "lex" namespace MUST contain all the necessary 617 pieces of information enabling the unequivocal identification of a 618 legal document. 619 In the legal domain, at the "work" level, they are essentially four: 620 the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly 621 the annex. 622 It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is: 623 - the original version and all the amended versions of the same 624 document; 625 - the versions of the text expressed in the different official 626 languages of the state or organization. 627 Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse 628 manifestations, which may be produced in multiple locations using 629 different means and formats. 630 In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work) 631 remains the same, but information is added regarding the specific 632 version under consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added 633 to the expression for representing the characteristics of the 634 publication (manifestation). 635 All this set of information is expressed in the jurisdiction official 636 language; in case of more official languages or more jurisdictions 637 involved (as in international treaties), more names (aliases) are 638 created. 640 Therefore, the more general structure of the national name appears as 641 follows: 643 ::=["@"]?["$"]? 645 However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of 646 the original provision becomes the identifier of an entire class of 647 documents which includes: the original document, the annexes, and all 648 its versions, languages and formats subsequently generated. 650 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level 652 The structure of the document identifier is made of the four 653 fundamental elements mentioned above, clearly distinguished one from 654 the other in accordance with an order identifying increasingly narrow 655 domains and competences: 657 ::=":"":"
[":"]* 659 where: 661 is the issuing or proposing authority of the measure 662 (e.g., State, Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.); 664 is the type of the measure, both public nature (e.g., 665 constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) as 666 well as private one (e.g., license, agreement, etc); 668
are the terms associated to the measure, typically the date 669 and the number; 671 is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1); 673 In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their 674 own uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the 675 identifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document. 676 In similar way the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending 677 to that of the annex which it is attached to. 679 The main elements of the national name are generally divided into 680 several elementary components, and, for each, specific rules of 681 representation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and 682 order). 683 For the details regarding each element, please see the Attachment B. 685 Examples of identifiers are: 687 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22 688 urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45 689 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 690 urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68 691 urn:lex:fr:senat:proposition.loi:2009-12-16;168 692 urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1 693 urn:lex:fsf.org:free.software.foundation:general.public.license:2007- 694 06-29;lex-1 696 4.5 Aliases 698 International treaties involve more jurisdictions (the signing ones) 699 so they are represented through more identifiers, each of them 700 related to an involved jurisdiction. For example, a bilateral France 701 and Germany treaty is identified through two URNs belonging to either 702 "fr" or "de" jurisdiction 703 (e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and 704 "urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:...") 705 since it pertains to both the French and the German jurisdiction. 707 In the states or organisations that have more than one official 708 language, a document has more identifiers, each of them expressed in 709 a different official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases. 710 This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniform 711 name of the referred source of law in the same language used in the 712 document itself. 713 (e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31", 714 "urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.) 715 Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in 716 order to facilitate its linking to other documents. This option can 717 be used for documents that, although unique, are commonly referenced 718 from different perspectives. For example, the form of a document's 719 promulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated 720 through a Decree of the President of the Republic). 722 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 724 There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to 725 specific versions or languages. 726 Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that 727 text is to be considered as the valid text (in force or effective). 728 The lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent 729 version. 730 New versions of a text may be brought into existence by: 731 - changes in the text (amendments) due to the issuing of other legal 732 acts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidated 733 texts; 734 - correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige); 735 - entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on 736 the specific date in which different partitions of a text come into 737 force. 738 Each such version may be expressed in more than one language, with 739 each language-version having its own specific identifier. 740 The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to 741 the work identifier, using the following main structure: 743 ::="@"[":"]? 745 where: 747 is the identifier of the version of the (original or 748 amended) source of law. In general it is expressed by the 749 promulgation date of the amending act; anyway other specific 750 information can be used for particular documents. If necessary, the 751 original version is specified by the string "original" (for the 752 details regarding this element, please see the Attachment C); 754 is the identification code of the language in which the 755 document is expressed, according to [ISO639-1] (it=Italian, 756 fr=French, de=German, etc.); in case the code of a language is not 757 included in this standard, the [ISO639-2] (3 letters) is used. This 758 information is not necessary when the text is expressed in the unique 759 official language of the country or jurisdiction. 761 Examples of document identifiers for expressions are: 763 urn:lex:ch:etat:lois:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr (original version in 764 French) 765 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de (original version 766 in German) 767 urn:lex:ch:etat:lois:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr (amended version in 768 French) 769 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de (amended version 770 in German) 772 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation Level 774 To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the 775 expression is followed by a suitable suffix describing the: 776 - digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed according to 777 the MIME Content-Type standard [RFC2045], where the "/" character 778 is to be substituted by the "-" sign; 779 - publisher or editorial staff who produced it; 780 - possible components of the expressions contained in the 781 manifestation. Such components are expressed by "body" (the default 782 value), representing the whole or the main part of the document, or 783 by the caption of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2, 784 etc.); 785 - other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision text). 786 To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each principal 787 element of the manifestation MAY be followed by a further 788 specification. 790 The suffix will thus read: 792 ::=[";""]* 793 ":"[";"]* 794 [":"[";"]*]? 795 [":"[";"]*]? 797 (e.g., the original version the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might 798 have the following manifestations with their relative uniform names: 799 - PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Parliament: 800 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-pdf;1.7: 801 parliament" 802 - XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF 803 format (version 1.7) of the Picture 1 contained in the body, edited 804 by the Senate: 805 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir-2.2:senate. 806 republic" 807 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-pdf;1.7:senate. 808 republic:picture.1"). 810 Furthermore, it is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a 811 manifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are 812 involved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in 813 their own right (e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts 814 recorded in non-textual formats, such as image scans of documents. 816 In these ways, a "lex" name permits: 817 - exploitation of all the advantages of an unequivocal identifier 818 that is independent of physical location; 819 - a means to provide choice among different existing manifestations 820 (e.g. XML or PDF formats, resolution degree of an image etc.) of 821 the same expression. 823 4.8 Sources of Law References 825 References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of 826 the act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document. 827 An act partition is a logical subdivision of the text, that, in a 828 structured format (as XML) fitting the document logical structure, is 829 represented by an element with its own ID; this ID aims to identify 830 the element and to locate it. In a mark-up that does not fit the 831 logical structure of the text (as HTML), generally only the starting 832 point of the partition, and not the element, is identified through a 833 label (a tag). 834 Therefore, for allowing browsers to point to a specific partition, it 835 is necessary that such partition is endowed with an unequivocal label 836 or ID within the including document and its value is the same 837 independently from the document format. 838 For enabling the construction of the partition identifier between 839 different collections of documents, specific construction rules for 840 IDs or labels SHOULD be defined and shared, within each country or 841 jurisdiction, for any document type (e.g., for legislation, the 842 paragraph 2 of the article 3 might have as label or ID the value 843 "art3-par2"). 844 Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility with 845 applications able to manage this information (e.g., returning the 846 proper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the case 847 of rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc. 848 For this purpose it is necessary that the partition identifier is 849 transmitted to the servers (resolution and application) and therefore 850 it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment, 851 which is not transmitted to the server. 853 According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is: 855 ::= ["~" ]? 857 (e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French 858 Act of 15 may 2004, n. 106, the reference is written 859 "urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15-par3"). 861 Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the 862 partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to 863 the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for 864 example, out of a database), if it is possible, only the referred 865 partition, otherwise to return the whole act. 866 Anyway, to make it effective pointing to the indicated partition, the 867 resolver SHOULD transform the partition ID of each returned URL in a 868 URI fragment; this is obtained appending to URL the "#" character 869 followed by the partition ID (in the example above, the returned URL 870 will be #art15-par3). 872 Anyway it is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in this 873 case only the URN document component of the reference is transmitted 874 to the resolver, therefore the whole document will be always 875 retrieved. 877 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment 879 5.1 Specifying the element of the URN "lex" 881 Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization 882 is assigned with a jurisdiction code, which characterizes the URNs of 883 the source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code is 884 assigned according to the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 (as well as TLDN or DN for 885 the organizations) representation and it is the value of the 886 element, which preserves cross-country uniqueness 887 of the identifiers. 889 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment 891 Any country or jurisdiction, who intends to adopt this schema, 892 identifies a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which shares 893 and defines the structure of the optional part () 894 of the name, according to the organization of the state or 895 institution. For example, in a federal state a 896 corresponding to the name of each member state (e.g. "br;sao.paolo", 897 "br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined. 899 The process of assigning the will be managed by each 900 specific country or jurisdiction under the related 901 element. 902 In any country the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the 903 assignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of 904 legal measure) of the local names considering the characteristics of 905 its own state or institution organization. 906 Such a Registrar SHOULD establish, according to the guidelines 907 indicated in the current document, a uniform procedure within the 908 country or organization to define elements, to take 909 decisions upon normalizations and finally to solve and avoid possible 910 name collisions as well as to maintain authoritative registries of 911 various kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). In 912 particular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structure 913 and naming of government entities are important to semantically-aware 914 applications in this domain. 915 Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct 916 partition IDs for each document type. 917 Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the 918 guidelines for the construction as well as the 919 predefined values and codes. 921 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness 923 Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a 924 element assigned to the sources of law of a specific 925 country or organization, and a assigned by the issuing 926 authority. The main elements (authority and type of measure) of the 927 are defined by the Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it 928 is ensured that the constructed URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional 929 Registrar SHOULD provide clear documentation of rules by which names 930 are to be constructed, and SHOULD update and make accessible its 931 registries. 933 Any issuing authority is responsible to define formal parameters to 934 guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a 935 conventional internal number, which, combined with the other components (authority, measure and date), builds an unequivocal 937 identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue 938 of previously assigned names. 940 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations 942 The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the 943 institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the "lex" 944 namespace schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all 945 resources identified by the assigned URNs. 947 In particular, CNIPA and ITTIG-CNR, as proposers, are responsible of 948 maintaining the uniqueness of the element; given that 949 the is assigned on the basis of the long-held ISO 3166 950 Alpha-2 representation of the country (or the TLD name of the 951 organization) and that the country or organization associated code is 952 expected to continue indefinitely, the URN also persists 953 indefinitely. 955 The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate 956 the responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which 957 is identified within each country or organization. 959 Therefore, each authority is responsible of assigning URNs which have 960 a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique for 961 the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations, as 962 well as diverse local forms of government organization, will result 963 in different methods of assigning responsibility for different levels 964 of the name. 965 Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an 966 authoritative hierarchy, it can and SHOULD be done by creating 967 consensus around a series of published rules for the creation and 968 administration of names by institutions and bodies that operate by 969 means of collaboration rather than compulsion. 971 Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging 972 from the national down to the very local, MUST equally take 973 responsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their 974 scope. 976 6 Principles of the Resolution Service 978 6.1 The General Architecture of the System 980 The task of the resolution service is that of associating a "lex" 981 identifier with a specific document address on the network. By 982 contrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and 983 enforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" resolver 984 will be expected to cope with a wide variety of "dirty" inputs, 985 particularly those created by the automated extraction of references 986 from incomplete or inaccurate texts. In this document, the result is 987 a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolver design. 989 The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental 990 components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a 991 series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent 992 within a specific domain of the namespace. 993 Through the NAPTR records of the DNS (described in [RFC3403]), the 994 client identifies the characteristics (protocol, port, site) of the 995 service (e.g. according to [RFC2169]) capable of associating the 996 relative URLs with the URN in question, thereby allowing access to 997 the document. 999 A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of 1000 hierarchically-dependent portions of the name. 1001 Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld 1002 provided that the processes for their resolution and management are 1003 robust and are followed. 1005 For the "lex" namespace, CNIPA and ITTIG-CNR will maintain the root 1006 zone "lex.urn.arpa" and, in correspondence with the adhesion of a new 1007 country (e.g., "br") or organization, will update the DNS information 1008 with a new record to delegate the relative resolution. This may be 1009 obtained by a regular expression that matches the initial part of the 1010 URN (e.g., "urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g., 1011 "lex.senado.gov.br"). 1013 Likewise the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniform 1014 names (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root 1015 in the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the 1016 resolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform 1017 names. In similar way it can delegate the resolution of 1018 country/organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo") 1019 towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br"). 1021 The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base 1022 (consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a 1023 software to query the knowledge base itself. 1025 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution 1027 Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations, 1028 and incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document 1029 are thus likely to be built from textual references (this is even 1030 more frequent if they are created automatically through a specific 1031 parser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based on 1032 a relational-database, is suggested, as it will lead to a more higher 1033 flexibility in the resolution process. 1034 In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various 1035 versions and languages of the same source of law as well as the 1036 related manifestations. 1038 It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own 1039 catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each 1040 resource. 1042 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour 1044 First of all the resolver should separate the part corresponding to 1045 the partition ID, through the "~" separator, from the document name. 1047 So, the resolution process SHOULD implement a normalization of the 1048 uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some 1049 components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms, 1050 expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names, 1051 standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function 1052 authorities and types of measure registers are useful. 1054 The resolver SHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URN 1055 which corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary). 1056 Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or 1057 incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial 1058 matches) is indicated. It is worth remarking that incomplete 1059 references (not including all the elements to create the canonical 1060 uniform name) are normal and natural; for a human reader, the 1061 reference would be "completed" by contextual understanding of the 1062 reference in the document in which it occurs. 1064 In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID information 1065 to retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition, 1066 otherwise to return of the entire document. 1068 Lacking more specific indications, the resolver SHOULD select the 1069 best (most recent) version of the requested source of law, and 1070 provide all the manifestations with their related items. 1071 A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will, 1072 of course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any 1073 suggested expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date, 1074 language, format, etc.). 1076 Finally, the resolver SHOULD append to URLs the "#" character 1077 followed by partition ID, transforming it in a URI fragment for 1078 browser pointing. 1080 7 Considerations 1082 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax 1084 No special considerations. 1086 7.2 Validation mechanism 1088 The national Authority (or those it delegates) of each adhering 1089 country or organization is responsible of the definition or 1090 acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authority 1091 and type of legal measure). 1093 7.3 Scope 1095 Global interest. 1097 7.4 Namespace Considerations 1098 In collaboration with the legislative XML community, registrants 1099 carried out a preliminary study of the URI alternatives to satisfy 1100 the key requirements. 1101 The options analysed were: a private URI scheme, URL, PURL and URN. 1102 URN was considered the most appropriate URI given the requirements 1103 analysis. 1104 Advantages we would emphasize are: 1105 - greater flexibility in building the identifier; 1106 - the capacity to represent name components that are not strictly 1107 hierarchical; 1108 - the potential for clear division of the identifier into macro 1109 parts, main elements and components, using different separators; 1110 - ease of managing optional parts of a name. 1112 7.5 Community Considerations 1114 The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of 1115 information systems used in the Public Administration at the national 1116 and international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the 1117 legal information towards a federated architecture. In such an 1118 architecture, documents are directly managed by the issuing 1119 authorities, with resulting benefits in information authenticity, 1120 quality and currency. A shared identification mechanism resources 1121 guarantees that a distributed system will be as efficient and 1122 effective as a comparable centralized system. 1124 Creators of Internet content that references legal materials - 1125 including publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of 1126 legal publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace 1127 because facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by manual 1128 or automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining documents 1129 that contain such references. 1131 Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will 1132 be entitled to access the namespace and its associated application, 1133 registers, and resolution services, to facilitate document access. 1135 7.6 IANA Considerations 1137 This document includes a URN NID registration for "lex" for entry in 1138 the IANA registry of URN NIDs (see [RFC5226] for more information). 1140 7.7 Security Considerations 1142 This document introduces no additional security considerations beyond 1143 those associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general. 1145 8 References 1146 8.1 Normative References 1148 [STD63] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 1149 10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003. 1151 [RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 1152 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 1154 [RFC3406] D Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. 1155 Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace 1156 Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002. 1158 [RFC2141] R. Moats, K. R. Sollins, "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1159 1997. 1161 [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform 1162 Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 1163 3986, January 2005. 1165 [RFC3403] M. Mealling, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS), 1166 Part Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database, RFC 1167 3403, October 2002. 1169 [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an 1170 IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, 1171 May 2008 1173 [ISO3166] ISO 3166, "Country name codes", ISO 3166-1:1997. 1175 [ISO639-1] ISO 639-1, "Codes for the representation of names of 1176 languages" - Part 1: alpha-2 code, 2003. 1178 [ISO639-2] ISO 639-2, "Codes for the representation of names of 1179 languages" - Part 2: alpha-3 code, 1999. 1181 [RFC2169] R. Daniel, "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN", 1182 RFC 2169, June 1997 1184 [RFC2045] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail 1185 Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message 1186 Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. 1188 8.2 Informative References 1190 [SPIN] P.L. Spinosa, "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian 1191 Legal Documents", May, 2006 1192 http://www.nir.it/sito_area3- 1193 ap_stan_assegnazione_nomi.htm 1195 [FRAN] E. Francesconi, "Technologies for European Integration. 1196 Standards-based Interoperability of Legal Information 1197 Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-3, European Press Academic 1198 Publishing, 2007. 1200 9 Acknowledgments 1202 The authors of this document wish to thank all the registrants for 1203 giving suggestions and comments. 1204 They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community for the 1205 interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group 1206 "Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian 1207 NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [SPIN]. 1208 The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the 1209 Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for 1210 his contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful 1211 discussions which greatly improved the final result. A special thank 1212 goes also to Joao Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system 1213 analyst of the Brazilian Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, 1214 information management consultant, for their detailed comments on the 1215 first drafts of this document, which provided significant hints to 1216 the final version of the standard. 1217 Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly 1218 contributed to the drafting of this document. 1220 10 Author's Addresses 1222 PierLuigi Spinosa, Enrico Francesconi 1223 Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) 1224 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) 1225 Via de' Barucci, 20 1226 50127 Firenze 1227 Italy 1228 Telephone: +39 055 43995 1229 e-mail: {pierluigi.spinosa, enrico.francesconi}@ittig.cnr.it 1231 Caterina Lupo 1232 Centro Nazionale per l'Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione 1233 (CNIPA) 1234 Viale Carlo Marx, 31/49 1235 00137 Roma 1236 Italy 1237 Telephone: +39 06 85264262 1238 e-mail: caterina.lupo@cnipa.it 1240 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of the "lex" 1241 namespace 1243 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1244 * General Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) 1245 * NID = namespace 1246 * NSS = specific name 1247 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1248 ::= "urn:"":" 1250 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1251 * Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) of the "lex" namespace 1252 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1253 ::= "lex" 1255 ::= "urn:lex:" 1257 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1258 * Structure of a "lex" specific name 1259 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1260 ::= ":" 1262 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1263 * Structure of the element 1264 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1265 ::= [";"]* 1267 ::= {2,4} 1269 ::= []* 1271 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1272 * Structure of the element 1273 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1274 ::= ["@"]?["$"]? 1276 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1277 * Structure of the element 1278 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1279 ::= ":"":"
[":"]* 1281 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1282 * Structure of the element 1283 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1284 ::= ["+"]* 1286 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1287 ::= []* 1289 ::= []* 1291 ::= []* 1293 ::= []* 1295 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1296 * Structure of the element 1297 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1298 ::= [";"]* 1300 ::= []* 1302 ::= []* 1304 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1305 * Structure of the
element 1306 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1307
::= (|)";" 1309 ::= [","]* 1310 "lex" 1311 ::= []* 1313 ::= ([","]*)| 1315 ::= [|]* 1317 ::= "lex-"+ 1319 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1320 * Structure of the element 1321 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1322 ::= [";"]* 1324 ::= []* 1326 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1327 * Structure of the element 1328 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1330 ::= [":"]? 1332 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1333 * Structure of the element 1334 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1335 ::= (|) 1336 [";"(|)]* 1338 ::= 1340 ::= 1342 ::= []* 1344 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1345 * Structure of the element 1346 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1348 ::= {2,3} 1350 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1351 * Structure of the element 1352 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1353 ::= [";""]* 1354 ":"[";""]* 1355 [":"[";"]*]? 1356 [":"[";"]*]? 1358 ::= [|"-"]* 1360 ::= [|"-"]* 1362 ::= [|"-"]* 1364 ::= [|"-"]* 1366 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1367 * Structure of the date 1368 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1369 ::= "-""-" 1371 ::= {4} 1372 ::= {2} 1373 ::= {2} 1375 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1376 * Allowed characters 1377 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1378 ::= | | | 1380 ::= | "." 1382 ::= | | 1383 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | 1384 "i" | "j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | 1385 "q" | "r" | "s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | 1386 "y" | "z" 1388 ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | 1389 "8" | "9" 1391 ::= ("%" ( | )){1,6} 1393 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" 1395 ::= "-" | "_" | "'" | "=" | "(" | ")" 1397 ::= ":" | "@" | "$" | "+" | ";" | "," 1399 ::= "*" | "!" 1401 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level 1403 B1 The element 1405 B1.1 Indication of the Authority 1407 The element of a uniform name may indicate, in the 1408 various cases: 1409 - the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More 1410 specifically, the authority adopting the provision or enacting it; 1411 - the institution where the provision is registered, known and 1412 referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills 1413 identified through the reference to the Chamber where they are 1414 presented); 1415 - the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the 1416 legal provision even when this is issued by another authority 1417 (e.g., the statute of a Body); 1418 - the entity that proposed the legal material not yet included in the 1419 institutional process (e.g. a proposed bill written by a a 1420 political party). 1422 B1.2 Multiple Issuers 1424 Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g., 1425 inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the 1426 element contains all the issuing parties (properly 1427 separated), as follows: 1429 ::= ["+"]* 1431 (e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances") 1433 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer 1435 Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an 1436 institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g., 1437 Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance 1438 with the institution's hierarchical structure, from the more general 1439 to more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the 1440 relative office (President, Director, etc.). 1441 Therefore, the structure of the issuer is as follows: 1443 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1445 (e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager") 1447 B1.4 Indication of the Body 1448 Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing 1449 authority is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional 1450 Acts) and normally it is not indicated in the references. 1451 Just like in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is 1452 limited to the minimum in relation to the type of measure. 1453 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act") 1455 B1.5 Indication of the Function 1457 Generally, the component is indicated, sometimes instead 1458 of the body itself: 1459 - in case of political, representative or elective offices 1460 (e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of 1461 "university.oxford;rectorship:decree"); 1462 - when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general 1463 manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to 1464 associate a specific internal institutional structure to 1465 (e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager"). 1467 It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in 1468 charge of an institution (typically, a general director); in this 1469 case, only the structure and not the person in charge is indicated 1470 (e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration"). 1472 The function MUST be indicated when: 1473 - it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the 1474 structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy 1475 director, etc.); 1476 - the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the 1477 indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity. 1479 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority 1481 Acts and measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or 1482 enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally 1483 indicated "state" (expressed in each country official language) as 1484 authority; the same convention is used for constitutions, codes 1485 (civil, criminal, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc) and 1486 international treaties. 1488 B2 The element 1490 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure 1492 In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory. 1493 This makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the 1494 measure (e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even 1495 if it is widely used. 1496 When the authority-measure combination clearly identifies a specific 1497 document, the type of measure is not defined through attributes 1498 referring to the enacting authority. 1499 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act") 1501 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure 1503 In the element, it is usually sufficient to indicate the 1504 type of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather 1505 than through the formal details (date and number), may be made 1506 through some of their characteristics such as the subject-matter 1507 covered (e.g., accounting regulations), nicknames referring to the 1508 promoter (e.g., Bassanini Act) or to the topic of the act (e.g., 1509 Bankruptcy Law), etc.. 1510 In these cases, the type of measure MAY be followed by further 1511 specifications useful in referencing even if the details are lacking: 1513 ::=[";"]* 1515 (e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy") 1517 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References 1519 There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually 1520 cited in different ways, for example through the legislative act 1521 introducing them into the legal order (President's decree, 1522 legislative decree, etc.) or through their legislative category 1523 (regulations, consolidation, etc.). 1524 In order to ensure, in all the cases, the validity of the references, 1525 an alias that takes into account the measure category is associated 1526 to the uniform name, representing the legislative form. 1527 (e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and 1528 "state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358"). 1530 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases 1532 The sources of law including different normative references are 1533 usually introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing 1534 of an act, which they are either included or attached to. It is, 1535 therefore, necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of 1536 the same document. Specifically, the different measures can be: 1537 - adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by 1538 the provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the 1539 correlation is established between two uniform names each featuring 1540 a completely different element 1541 (e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and 1542 "ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic. 1543 planning:decree"); 1544 - issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing 1545 authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers to 1546 the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two aliases 1547 share the first part of the authority; 1548 (e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and 1549 "municipality.firenze;council:deliberation"); 1550 - issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own 1551 competence; in this case the element is the same 1552 (e.g., "ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools. 1553 telematic.process" and "ministry.justice:decree"). 1555 B3 The
element 1557 B3.1 Indication of the Details 1559 The details of a source of law usually include the date of the 1560 enactment and the identification number (inclusion in the body of 1561 laws, register, protocol, etc.). 1562 Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which 1563 the number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a 1564 measure has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these 1565 reasons, the set up of both elements (date and number) includes 1566 multiple values. 1568 Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents 1569 through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number) 1570 rather than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and 1571 never used in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV 1572 legislature). In these cases, the component is used in 1573 substitution of the component . 1575 Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific 1576 sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform 1577 name, which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date- 1578 number has the following form: 1580
::=(|)";" 1582 (e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislation;s.2544") 1584 B3.2 Multiple Dates 1586 Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one 1587 date; in this case, in the field all the given dates are to 1588 be reported and indicated as follows: 1590 ::=[","]* 1592 (e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30, 1593 1999- January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name: 1594 "personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13; 1595 1-p-2000"). 1597 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures 1599 Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non- 1600 unequivolcal identifier, because several measures of the same type 1601 can exist, issued on the same day by the same authority. 1602 To ensure that the uniform name is unambiguous, the field 1603 MUST, in any case, contain a discriminating element, which can be any 1604 identifier used internally, and not published, by the authority 1605 (e.g., protocol). 1606 If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier 1607 MUST be created for the name system. In order to easily differentiate 1608 it, such number is preceded by the string "lex-": 1610 ::="lex-"[]+ 1612 (e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3") 1614 It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a 1615 discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities, 1616 only one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to 1617 the document (e.g., the proponent). 1618 The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g., 1619 the Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are 1620 recognized by the univocal identifying label printed on the paper. 1621 Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in 1622 an official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear 1623 advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found. 1625 B3.4 Multiple Numbers 1627 Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by 1628 a set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills). 1629 In this case, in the field, all the identifiers are 1630 reported, according to the following structure: 1632 ::=[","]* 1634 (e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97") 1635 The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g., 1636 ":"), including the comma, cannot exist inside the , and 1637 therefore MUST be turned into "-". 1639 This conversion may imply that the uniform name of the document is no 1640 more unique (e.g., removal 123-BIS and return 123/BIS of the bill 123 1641 both are identified as "123-bis"); in this case, it is necessary to 1642 add a specific distinctive ending (e.g., "123-bis-removal" and "123- 1643 bis-return"). 1645 B4 The element 1647 B4.1 Formal Annexes 1649 Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may 1650 be referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to 1651 which they are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the 1652 main document as well as each formal individual annex is univocally 1653 identified. 1655 Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a 1656 legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In any 1657 case, they MUST be given a uniform name, which includes the uniform 1658 name of the source of law to which they are attached, and a suffix 1659 which identifies the annex itself. 1661 The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the 1662 annex and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which 1663 will facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is 1664 missing: 1666 ::=[";"]* 1668 (e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1669 borders.park") 1671 The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved 1672 (e.g. ":") must not be featured in the and therefore MUST 1673 be turned into ".". 1675 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes 1677 When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers 1678 are created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those 1679 of the annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it). 1681 (e.g., Table 1 attached to Attachment A of the preceding legal act 1682 has the following uniform name: 1683 "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1684 borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories"). 1686 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 1687 Expression 1689 C1 The element 1691 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document 1693 The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the 1694 following forms: 1695 - "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the modified 1696 parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts) and their 1697 related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside one single 1698 object (e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be able, in a 1699 dynamic way, to appear in different forms according to the 1700 requested date of effectiveness; 1701 - "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object 1702 is created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each 1703 object is, therefore, characterized by its own period of validity. 1704 In any case all the versions SHOULD be linked one another and 1705 immediately navigable. 1707 C1.2 Identification of the Version 1709 In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to 1710 the uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific 1711 suffix. 1712 Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and 1713 includes, first and foremost, one of the following elements: 1714 - the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account; 1715 - the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the 1716 errata corrige, is published; 1717 - a specification which must identify the reason concerning the 1718 amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process), 1719 for the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills). 1721 Anyway it is possible to add further specifications that will 1722 distinguish each of the different versions of the text to guarantee 1723 identifier unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the 1724 in-force or effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text 1725 itself (e.g., when the amendments introduced by an act are applied at 1726 different times) or different events occurring in the same date. 1728 ::=(|) 1729 [";"(|)]* 1731 where: 1732 - contains the issuing date of the last considered 1733 amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the 1734 original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is 1735 effective and the information system produces one version for each 1736 of them, such element contains the string "original"; 1737 - any information useful to identify unambiguously 1738 and univocally the version; 1739 - contains the date in which a version is put into 1740 force, is effective or is published; 1741 - is a name assigned to the event producing a further version 1742 (e.g., amendment, decision, etc.). 1744 The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a 1745 version because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data). 1747 (e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19" 1748 identifies the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No. 1749 12" with the amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998, 1750 No. 51", without any indication of its actual entry into force. The 1751 same uniform name with the additional ending ";1999-01-01" indicates 1752 the in-force or effective version starting in a different date (from 1753 1/1/99). 1755 For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the 1756 effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a 1757 new uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the 1758 identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case 1759 of a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate 1760 every uniform name with the period of time during which such a name 1761 together with its corresponding text is to be considered valid. 1763 (e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941, 1764 no. 12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of 1765 02/19/1998, no. 51", contains the name of the original 1766 "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12" as well as the name of the updated 1767 version "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19"). 1769 Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a 1770 new version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the 1771 creation of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order 1772 to guarantee their alignment (i.e., the main document, the 1773 attachments and annexes).