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Checking references for intended status: Informational ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 3406 (Obsoleted by RFC 8141) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2141 (Obsoleted by RFC 8141) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 5226 (Obsoleted by RFC 8126) Summary: 3 errors (**), 0 flaws (~~), 2 warnings (==), 1 comment (--). Run idnits with the --verbose option for more detailed information about the items above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 INTERNET-DRAFT P. Spinosa 3 Intended Status: Informational ITTIG/CNR 4 Expires: April 4, 2013 E. Francesconi 5 ITTIG/CNR 6 C. Lupo 7 (ICT consultant) 8 October 1, 2012 10 A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 11 for Sources of Law (LEX) 12 draft-spinosa-urn-lex-07.txt 14 Status of this Memo 16 This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the 17 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 19 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 20 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that 21 other groups may also distribute working documents as 22 Internet-Drafts. 24 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 25 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 26 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 27 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 29 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 30 http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html 32 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 33 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html 35 This Internet-Draft will expire on April 4, 2013. 37 Copyright Notice 39 Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 40 document authors. All rights reserved. 42 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 43 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents 44 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of 45 publication of this document. Please review these documents 46 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect 47 to this document. 49 Abstract 51 This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 52 Identification (NID) convention as prescribed by the World Wide Web 53 Consortium (W3C) for identifying, naming, assigning, and managing 54 persistent resources in the legal domain. 56 Table of Contents 58 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 59 1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 60 1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 61 1.3 The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 62 1.4 General Characteristics of the System . . . . . . . . . . . 8 63 1.5 Linking a LEX Name to a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 64 1.6 Use of LEX Names in References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 65 1.7 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 66 1.8 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 67 2 Specification Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 68 2.1 Namespace ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 69 2.2 Registration Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 70 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 71 2.4 Identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 72 3 General Syntax of the LEX Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 73 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters . . . . . . . . . . . 13 74 3.2 Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 75 3.3 Case sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 76 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs . . . . . . . . . 14 77 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 14 78 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 79 3.7 Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 80 3.8 Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 81 3.9 Ordinal Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 82 4 Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier . . . . . . . . . 15 83 4.1 Basic Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 84 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation . . . . . . . . . 15 85 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 86 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level . . . 17 87 4.5 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 88 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 19 89 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation 90 Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 91 4.8 Sources of Law References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 92 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment . . . . . . . . . . 22 93 5.1 Specifying the element of the LEX 94 identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 95 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment . . . . . . 22 96 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 97 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations . . . . . . . . . . 24 98 6 Principles of the Resolution Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 99 6.1 The General Architecture of the System . . . . . . . . . 24 100 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 101 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 102 7 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 103 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 104 7.2 Validation mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 105 7.3 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 106 7.4 Namespace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 107 7.5 Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 108 7.6 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 109 7.7 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 110 8 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 111 8.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 112 8.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 113 9 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 114 10 Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 115 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of 116 the "lex" namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 117 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level . 35 118 B1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 119 B1.1 Indication of the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 120 B1.2 Multiple Issuers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 121 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 122 B1.4 Indication of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 123 B1.5 Indication of the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 124 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 125 B2 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 126 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure . . . 36 127 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure . . . . . . 37 128 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative 129 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 130 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases . 37 131 B3 The
element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 132 B3.1 Indication of the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 133 B3.2 Multiple Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 134 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 135 B3.4 Multiple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 136 B4 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 137 B4.1 Formal Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 138 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 139 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 140 Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 141 C1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 142 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document . . . . . . 41 143 C1.2 Identification of the Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 144 Attachment D -- Http-based LEX identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 145 D1 Http-based URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 146 D2 The http-based LEX identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . 44 147 D3 The http-based LEX identifier at Work Level . . . . . . . . . 45 148 D4 The http-based LEX identifier at Expression Level . . . . . . 45 149 D5 The http-based LEX identifier at Manifestation Level . . . . . 46 151 1 Introduction 153 1.1 The Purpose of Namespace "lex" 155 The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign an unequivocal 156 identifier, in standard format, to documents that are sources of law. 157 To the extent of this namespace, "sources of law" include any legal 158 document within the domain of legislation, case law and 159 administrative acts or regulations; moreover potential "sources of 160 law" (acts under the process of law formation, as bills) are included 161 as well. Therefore "legal doctrine" is explicitly not covered. 163 The identifier is conceived so that its construction depends only on 164 the characteristics of the document itself and is, therefore, 165 independent from the document's on-line availability, its physical 166 location, and access mode. 168 This identifier will be used as a way to represent the references 169 (and more generally, any type of relation) among the various sources 170 of law. In an on-line environment with resources distributed among 171 different Web publishers, uniform resource names allow simplified 172 global interconnection of legal documents by means of automated 173 hypertext linking. 175 1.2 Entities Supporting this Standard 177 The following entities support this proposal: 179 - ITTIG/CNR (Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of 180 the Italian National Research Council) - Italy; 181 - National Centre for ICT in Public Administration - Italy; 182 - PRODASEN - IT Department of the Federal Senate - Brazil; 183 - LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - USA 185 1.3 The Context 187 In the last few years a number of initiatives have arisen in the 188 field of legal document management. 190 Since 2001 the Italian Government, through the National Center for 191 Information Technology in the Public Administration, the Ministry of 192 Justice and ITTIG-CNR (the Institute of Legal Information Theory and 193 Techniques of the Italian National Research Council) promoted the 194 NormeInRete project. It was aimed at introducing standards for 195 sources of law description and identification using XML and URN 196 techniques. 198 Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for the 199 description of legal sources [FRAN]: for example the Metalex project, 200 promoted by the University of Amsterdam and adopted by the Dutch Tax 201 and Customs Administration, the Belgian Public Centers for Welfare 202 and others; LexDania project in Denmark supported by the Danish 203 Ministry of Justice; CHLexML in Switzerland developed by COPIUR, the 204 Coordination Office for the Electronic Publication of Legal Data 205 Federal Office of Justice; eLaw in Austria mainly coordinated by the 206 Austrian Parliament. 208 Such initiatives, based in synergies between government, national 209 research institutes, and universities, have defined national XML 210 standards for legal document management, as well as schemes for legal 211 document identification. 213 Outside Europe, similar initiatives have faced similar problems. For 214 example, the Brazilian Senate carried out a feasibility study to 215 provide unique and transparent identifiers to sources of law on the 216 basis of the IFLA-FRBR model. 217 Similarly, the Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented 218 Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and 219 Ontologies) project provides a set of guidelines for e-Parliament 220 services in a Pan-African context by proposing an XML document schema 221 providing sophisticated description possibilities for several 222 Parliamentary document types (including bills, acts and parliamentary 223 records, etc.). 224 Finally, the Tasmanian Government provided advanced legislative 225 information services through the EnAct project. It gave searchable 226 consolidated Tasmanian legislation by automating much of the 227 legislative drafting and consolidation process, as well as using SGML 228 document representation. Numerous less-visible efforts in the United 229 States and elsewhere have struggled with similar issues. 231 Several of these identifiers are based on a URN schema. The first 232 national standard was defined in Italy within the NormeInRete 233 project; to this the Brazilian Lexml standard followed. Denmark, 234 Hungary, Slovenia and Switzerland expressed their interest in URN 235 identifier for legislation as well. All these standards have a common 236 internal structure, regarding both the hierarchy and the elements 237 content. 239 In today's information society the processes of political, social and 240 economic integration of European Union member states as well as the 241 increasing integration of the world-wide legal and economic processes 242 are causing a growing interest in exchanging legal information 243 knowledge at national and trans-national levels. 244 The growing desire for improved quality and accessibility of legal 245 information amplifies the need for interoperability among legal 246 information systems across national boundaries. A common open 247 standard used to identify sources of law at international level is an 248 essential prerequisite for interoperability. 250 Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their 251 intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique. 252 The need for a unequivocal identifier of sources of law in different 253 EU Member States, based on open standards and able to provide 254 advanced modalities of document hyper-linking, has been expressed in 255 several conferences by representatives of the Office for Official 256 Publications of the European Communities (OPOCE), with the aim of 257 promoting interoperability among national and European institution 258 information systems. Similar concerns have been raised by 259 international groups concerned with free access to legal information, 260 and the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private 261 International Law is considering a resolution that would encourage 262 member states to "adopt neutral methods of citation of their legal 263 materials, including methods that are medium-neutral, provider- 264 neutral and internationally consistent". In a similar direction the 265 CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at European level, towards the 266 definition of a standard interchange format for sources of law, 267 including recommendations for defining naming conventions to them. 269 The need of semantic Web unequivocal identifiers for sources of law 270 is of particular interest also in the domain of case law. Such need 271 is extremely felt within both common law systems, where cases are the 272 main law sources, and civil law systems, for the importance of 273 providing an integrated access to cases and legislation, as well as 274 to track the relationships between them. This domain is characterized 275 by a high degree of fragmentation in case law information systems, 276 which usually lack interoperability. 277 Recently in the European Union, the community institutions have 278 stressed the need for citizens, businesses, lawyers, prosecutors and 279 judges to become more aware not only of (directly applicable) EU law, 280 but also of the various national legal systems. The growing 281 importance of national judiciaries for the application of Community 282 law was recently stressed in the resolution of the European 283 Parliament of 9 July 2008 on the role of the national judge in the 284 European judicial system. 285 Similarly the European e-Justice action plan 2009-2013 of the Council 286 of the European Union underlined the importance of cross-border 287 access to national case law, as well as the need for its 288 standardisation, in view of an integrated access in a decentralized 289 architecture. In this view the Working Party on Legal Data Processing 290 (e-Law) of the Council of the European Union formed a task group to 291 study the possibilities for improving cross-border access to national 292 case law. Taking notice of the report of the Working Party's task 293 group the Council of the EU decided in 2009 to elaborate on a 294 uniform, European system for the identification of case law (ECLI: 296 European Case-Law Identifier) and uniform Dublin Core-based set of 297 metadata. 299 LEX identifier is conceived to be general enough, so to provide 300 guidance at the core of the standard and sufficient flexibility to 301 cover a wide variety of needs for identifying all the legal documents 302 of different nature, namely legislative, case-law and administrative 303 acts. Moreover it can be effectively used within a federative 304 environment where different publishers (public and private) can 305 provide their own items of an act (that is there is more than one 306 manifestation of the same act). 307 However specifications and syntax rules of LEX identifier can be used 308 also for http-based naming convention (Appendix D) to cope with 309 different requirements in legal information management, for example 310 the need of having an identifier compliant with the Linked Open Data 311 principles. 313 The LEX naming convention has interpreted all these recommendations, 314 proposing an original solution for sources of law identification. 316 1.4 General Characteristics of the System 318 Registrants wish now to promote interoperability among legal 319 information systems by the definition of a namespace convention and 320 structure that will create and manage identifiers for legal 321 documents. The identifiers will be: 322 - globally unique 323 - transparent 324 - persistent 325 - location-independent, and 326 - language-neutral. 327 These qualities will facilitate legal document management as well as 328 provide a mechanism of stable cross-collections and cross-country 329 references. 330 Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that will 331 promote adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to 332 official-language requirements. The proposed standard will provide 333 useful guidance to both public and private groups that create, 334 promulgate, and publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize 335 the potential for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, while 336 preserving sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document types 337 and to respect the need for local control of collections by an 338 equally diverse assortment of administrative entities. 340 As usual, the problem is to provide the right amount guidance at the 341 core of the standard while providing sufficient flexibility to cover 342 a wide variety of needs. The proposed LEX standard does this by 343 splitting the identifier into parts. The first part uses a 344 predetermined standard ("country/jurisdiction name standard") to 345 specify the country (or more generally the jurisdiction) of origin 346 for the legal document being identified; the remainder ("local name") 347 is intended for local use in identifying documents issued in that 348 country or jurisdiction. This second part depends only on sources of 349 law identification system operating in that nation and it is mainly 350 composed by a formalized information related to the enacting 351 authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly the annex. 353 The identification system based on uniform names MUST include: 354 - a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously 355 any addressed source of law, namely legislation, case law and 356 administrative acts, issued by any authority (intergovernmental, 357 supranational, national, regional and local) at any time (past, 358 present and future); 359 - a resolution mechanism - in a distributed environment - that ties a 360 uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding 361 resources. 362 This document only considers the first of these requirements. It also 363 contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution 364 service and to the corresponding software. 366 1.5 Linking a LEX Name to a Document 368 The LEX name is linked to the document through meta-information which 369 may be specified: 370 - internally to the document itself through a specific element within 371 an XML schema or by an HTML META tag; 372 - externally by means of an RDF triple, a specific attribute in a 373 database, etc. 374 One of these modalities is necessary for enabling automated 375 construction and updating of catalogues (distributed and centralized) 376 and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name 377 of a document with its physical location(s). The standard assumes no 378 particular relationship between the originator of the document, its 379 publisher, and the implementer of catalogues or resolution services. 380 They may be the same entity, or not. 382 1.6 Use of LEX Names in References 384 LEX names will be used on a large scale in references as a HREF 385 attribute value of the hypertext link to the referred document. 386 This link can be created in two ways: 387 - by manually inserting, in the referring document, the link with the 388 uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure especially for 389 documents that are already on-line; 390 - by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily) 391 the link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a 392 text: this is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a 393 certain percentage of errors, since references are not always 394 accurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless be 395 acceptable for already published documents. 396 In any case, whatever the method adopted is, new documents produced 397 in XML format compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema, SHOULD 398 express references through the uniform name of the document referred 399 to. 401 1.7 Definitions 403 According to this document, the following terms are used in the 404 following meaning: 405 - Source of Law: 406 is a general concept, and is used to refer to legislation, case 407 law, regulations and administrative acts. In its broadest sense, 408 the source of law is anything that can be conceived of as the 409 originator of 'erga omnes' legal rules. In this document "source of 410 law" refers also to acts during their formation cycle as bills that 411 might or might not become sources of law; 412 - Registrar: 413 is an organization which shares and defines in any country or 414 jurisdiction the assignment of the main components of the resource 415 identifier through which its uniqueness is guaranteed. This task 416 includes the definition of possible jurisdiction unit and the 417 primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure) of 418 uniform name, according to the characteristics of its own state or 419 institution organization. 421 1.8 Terminology 423 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 424 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 425 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 427 2 Specification Template 429 2.1 Namespace ID 431 "lex" requested according to [RFC3406]. 433 2.2 Registration Information 435 Version Number: 1.0 436 Date: 2011-04-01 438 Declared registrant of the namespace: 440 Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG) 441 Italian National Research Council (CNR) 442 Via de' Barucci, 20 443 50127 Florence 444 Italy 446 e-mail: lex@ittig.cnr.it 448 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document 450 This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is 451 based on the BNF (Backus-Naur Form) meta-language. In particular: 452 - elements are included between angle brackets ("<" and ">"); 453 - an element is separated from its specification by the string "::="; 454 - alternative elements are separated from each other by a vertical 455 slash ("|"); 456 - character strings are enclosed in quotes (" and "); 457 - optional parts are enclosed by square brackets ("[" and "]"); 458 - a group of elements is enclosed by round brackets ("(" and ")"); 459 - a symbol or an expression following an element or a group of 460 elements indicates a factor of repetition, and, as in the regular 461 expressions, takes the following formats: 462 - ? : 0 or 1 time; 463 - + : 1 or more times; 464 - * : 0 or more times; 465 - {n} : times; 466 - {n,m}: from to times. 468 2.4 Identifier structure 470 The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows: 472 "urn:lex:" 474 where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows: 476 ::=":" 478 where: 480 is the part providing the identification of the 481 jurisdiction, generally corresponding to the country, where the 482 source of law is issued. It is also possible to represent 483 international organizations (either states or public administrations 484 or private entities); 486 is the uniform name of the source of law in the country 487 or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal structure is common 488 to the already adopted schemas. It is able to represent all the 489 aspects of an intellectual production, as it is a legal document, 490 from its initial idea, through its evolution during the time, to its 491 realisation by different means (paper, digital, etc.). 493 The element is composed of two specific fields: 495 ::=[";"]* 497 where: 499 is usually the identification code of the country 500 where the source of law is issued; this code follows the standard 501 [ISO3166] Alpha-2 (it=Italy, fr=France, dk=Denmark, etc.) which 502 usually is identical to the country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). In 503 case such codes are not identical (as for United Kingdom, whose ISO 504 3166 code is .gb while its ccTLD is .uk), one of them is chosen as 505 . In case of multi-national (e.g., European Union) 506 or international (e.g., United Nations, Free Software Foundation) 507 organizations the Top Level Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain 508 Name (e.g., "un.org", "wto.int") is used instead of ISO 3166 code. In 509 case such multi-national or international organization does not have 510 a registered domain, in order to avoid ambiguities or collisions with 511 actual domains, a domain name (according to the english acronym of 512 the organization name) under the virtual domain "lex" is used. For 513 example, the jurisdiction code of the European Economic Community is 514 "eec.lex"; 516 are the possible administrative hierarchical sub- 517 structures defined by each country or organisation according to its 518 own legal system. This additional information can be used where two 519 or more levels of legislative or judicial production exist (e.g., 520 federal, state and municipality level) and the same bodies may be 521 present in each jurisdiction. Then acts of the same type issued by 522 similar authorities in different areas differ for the jurisdiction- 523 unit specification. An example can be the following: 524 "br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government), 525 "br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of SU+00E3o Paulo state) and 526 "br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo: decreto" (decree of Campinas 527 municipality). 529 Examples of law sources identifiers are: 531 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456 (Italian act) 532 urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-12-06;321 (French act) 533 urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123 (Spanish act) 534 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 (Glarus Swiss Canton 535 decree) 536 urn:lex:eu:commission:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-EU (EU Commission 537 Directive) 538 urn:lex:us:federal.supreme.court:decision:1963-03-18;372.us.335 (US 539 FSC decision) 540 urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273 (Decision of the 541 Belgian Council of State) 543 3 General Syntax of the LEX Identifier 545 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters 547 These characters are defined in accordance with the [RFC2141] "URN 548 Syntax". For various reasons, later explained, in the "lex" 549 only a sub-set of characters is allowed. All other characters are 550 either eliminated or converted. 552 For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please 553 see Attachment A. 555 3.2 Reserved Characters 557 These characters MUST always and uniquely be used for the assigned 558 purpose. 559 The first category includes those characters bearing a specific 560 meaning in the general creation of the URI (Uniform Resource 561 Identifier)[RFC3986]: 563 "%" "/" "?" "#" 565 The following characters instead are reserved in the specific "lex" 566 namespace: 568 - "@" separator of the expression, that contains information on 569 version and language; 570 - "$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on 571 format, editor, etc.; 572 - ":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity; 573 - ";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an 574 element at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a 575 specification; 576 - "+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g., 577 multiple authorities); 578 - "," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the 579 main elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g., 580 multiple numbers); 581 - "~" separator of the partition identifier in references (e.g., 582 paragraph of an article); 583 - "*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions. 585 3.3 Case sensitivity 587 The specific name of the URN, as with URLs, is case-sensitive. 588 Since the case does not change the logical identification of the 589 source of law, the names belonging to the "lex" namespace are 590 considered functionally equivalent independently from the case. To 591 take advantage of memory caching, the specific name is always created 592 in lower case. 593 (e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry") 595 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs 597 In order to keep editing and communication more simple and to avoid 598 character percent-encoding, it is strongly recommended that national 599 characters and diacritic signs are turned into base characters (e.g., 600 the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" converted into "sanita", the French 601 term "ministU+00E8re" converted into "ministere"). Otherwise, the 602 characters have to be percent-encoded according to the UTF-8 603 character encoding [STD63] (e.g., "sanitU+00E0" encoded into 604 "sanit%C3%A1"). 605 Anyway each country or jurisdiction decides the uniform names 606 encoding modality of all the sources of law issued within its 607 territory. 609 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 611 All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.), 612 the punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes, 613 dashes, etc.) are eliminated. The words left are connected each other 614 by a dot (".") which substitutes the "space". 615 (e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning" 616 becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning") 618 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion 620 All abbreviations indicating institutions (e.g., Min.), structures 621 (e.g., Dept.), or legal measures (e.g., reg.), MUST be expanded. 622 (e.g., "Min." must be reported as "ministry") 624 3.7 Acronyms 626 The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in 627 uniform names (the same acronym may indicate two different 628 institutions or structures), therefore their expansion is strongly 629 recommended. 630 (e.g., "FAO" is to be expanded as "food.agriculture.organization") 632 3.8 Date Format 633 Dates are expressed by numbers in the ISO-8601 format: 635 yyyy-mm-dd 637 (e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02") 639 3.9 Ordinal Numbers 641 Any ordinal number included in a component of a document name (e.g., 642 in the description of an institution body) MUST be indicated in 643 Arabic numerals, regardless to the original expression: whether in 644 Roman numerals, or with an adjective, or in Arabic numeral with apex, 645 etc. (IV, third, 1U+00B0, 2^, etc.). 646 (e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4") 648 4 Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier 650 4.1 Basic Principles 652 The uniform name must identify one and only one document (more 653 precisely a "bibliographic entity") and is created in such a way that 654 it is: 655 - self-explanatory ; 656 - identifiable through simple and clear rules; 657 - compatible with the practice commonly used for references; 658 - able to be created by references in the text, automatically (by 659 parser) or manually; 660 - representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of 661 the document. 663 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation 665 According to FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) 666 model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library 667 Associations and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any 668 intellectual production, 4 fundamental entities (or aspects) can be 669 specified. 671 The first 2 entities reflect its contents: 672 - work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it 673 identifies a source of law both in its being (as it has been issued 674 or proposed) and in its becoming (as it is modified over time); 675 - expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a 676 work; in our case it identifies every different (original or up-to- 677 date) version of the source of law over time and/or language in 678 which the text is expressed; 679 while the other 2 entities relate to its form: 680 - manifestation: identifies a concrete realisation of an expression; 681 in our case it identifies realizations in different media 682 (printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.), or 683 other publishing characteristics; 684 - item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case it 685 identifies individual physical copies as they are found in 686 particular physical locations. 688 In this document the FRBR model has been interpreted for the specific 689 characteristics of the legal domain. In particular, a part from the 690 language which does produce a specific expression, the discriminative 691 criterion between expression and manifestation is based on the 692 difference of the juridical effects that a variation can provide with 693 respect to the involved actors (citizens, parties, institutions). In 694 this scenario the main characteristic of the expression of an act is 695 represented by its validity over the time, during which it provides 696 the same juridical effects. These effects change for amendments or 697 annulments of other legislative or jurisprudential acts. Therefore 698 notes, summarizations, comments, anonymizations and other editorial 699 activities over the same text do not produce different expressions, 700 but different manifestations. 702 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name 704 The within the "lex" namespace MUST contain all the 705 necessary pieces of information enabling the unequivocal 706 identification of a legal document. 707 In the legal domain, at the "work" level, they are essentially four: 708 the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and the 709 annex, if any. 710 It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is: 711 - the original version and all the amended versions of the same 712 document; 713 - the versions of the text expressed in the different official 714 languages of the state or organization. 715 Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse 716 manifestations, which may be produced in multiple locations using 717 different means and formats. 718 In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work) 719 remains the same, but information is added regarding the specific 720 version under consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added 721 to the expression for representing the characteristics of the 722 publication (manifestation). 723 The information which forms a source of law uniform name at each 724 level (work, expression, manifestation) is expressed in the official 725 language of the related jurisdiction; in case of more official 726 languages (as in Switzerland) or more involved jurisdictions (as in 727 international treaties), more language-dependent names (aliases) are 728 created. 730 Therefore, the more general structure of the national name appears as 731 follows: 733 ::=["@"]?["$"]? 735 However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of 736 the main original provision (work) becomes the identifier of an 737 entire class of documents which includes: the original main document, 738 the annexes, and all their versions, languages and formats 739 subsequently generated. 741 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level 743 The structure of the document identifier is made of the four 744 fundamental elements mentioned above, clearly distinguished one from 745 the other in accordance with an order identifying increasingly narrow 746 domains and competences: 748 ::=":"":"
[":"]* 750 where: 752 is the issuing or proposing authority of the measure 753 (e.g., State, Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.); 755 is the type of the measure, both public nature (e.g., 756 constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) as 757 well as private one (e.g., license, agreement, etc); 759
are the terms associated to the measure, typically the date 760 (usually the signature date) and the number included in the heading 761 of the act; 763 is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1). 765 In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their 766 own uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the 767 identifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document. 768 In similar way the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending 769 to that of the annex which it is attached to. 771 The main elements of the national name are generally divided into 772 several elementary components, and, for each, specific rules of 773 representation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and 774 order). 775 For the details regarding each element, please see the Attachment B. 777 Examples of identifiers are: 779 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22 780 urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45 781 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 782 urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68 783 urn:lex:fr:assemblee.nationale:proposition.loi:13.legislature;1762 784 urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1 785 urn:lex:fsf.org:free.software.foundation:general.public.license:2007- 786 06-29;lex-1 787 urn:lex:nl:hoge.raad:besluit:2008-04-01;bc8581 789 It is worth to note that the type of measure is important to identify 790 case law, as well as legislation, especially within the legal systems 791 where cases, by tradition, are identified only through the year of 792 release and a number. Since the aim of the "urn:lex" schema is to 793 identify specific materials, the type of measure or the full date are 794 able to provide discrimination between materials belonging to a 795 specific case. 797 Here below is an example where the type of measure or the full date 798 are essential for identify specific materials of a case: 799 - 4/59 Judgment of the EEC Court of Justice 04/04/1960, Mannesmann AG 800 and others / ECSC High Authority 801 urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:judgment:1960-04-04;4-59 802 - 4/59 Order of the EEC Court of Justice 18/05/1960, Mannesmann AG 803 and others / ECSC High Authority 804 urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:order:1960-05-18;4-59 806 4.5 Aliases 808 International treaties involve more jurisdictions (the signing ones) 809 so they are represented through more identifiers, each of them 810 related to an involved jurisdiction. For example, a bilateral France 811 and Germany treaty is identified through two URNs (aliases) belonging 812 to either "fr" or "de" jurisdiction 813 (e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and 814 "urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:...") 815 since it pertains to both the French and the German jurisdiction. 817 In the states or organisations that have more than one official 818 language, a document has more identifiers, each of them expressed in 819 a different official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases. 820 This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniform 821 name of the referred source of law in the same language used in the 822 document itself. 823 (e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31", 824 "urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.) 826 Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in 827 order to facilitate its linking to other documents. This option can 828 be used for documents that, although unique, are commonly referenced 829 from different perspectives. For example, the form of a document's 830 promulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated 831 through a Decree of the President of the Republic). 833 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 835 There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to 836 specific versions or languages. 837 Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that 838 text is to be considered as the valid text (in force or effective). 839 The lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent 840 version. 841 New versions of a text may be brought into existence by: 842 - changes in the text (amendments) due to the issuing of other legal 843 acts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidated 844 texts; 845 - correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige); 846 - entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on 847 the specific date in which different partitions of a text come into 848 force. 849 Each of such versions may be expressed in more than one language, 850 with each language-version having its own specific identifier. 851 The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to 852 the work identifier, using the following main structure: 854 ::=[":"]? 856 where: 858 is the identifier of the version of the (original or 859 amended) source of law. In general it is expressed by the 860 promulgation date of the amending act; anyway other specific 861 information can be used for particular documents. If necessary, the 862 original version is specified by the string "original" (for the 863 details regarding this element, please see the Attachment C); 865 is the identification code of the language in which the 866 document is expressed, according to [ISO639-1] (it=Italian, 867 fr=French, de=German, etc.); in case the code of a language is not 868 included in this standard, the [ISO639-2] (3 letters) is used. This 869 information is not necessary when the text is expressed in the unique 870 official language of the country or jurisdiction. 872 Examples of document identifiers for expressions are: 874 urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr (original version in 875 French) 876 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de (original version 877 in German) 878 urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr (amended version in 879 French) 880 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de (amended version 881 in German) 882 urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273@originel:fr 883 (original version in French of a Belgian decision) 885 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation Level 887 To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the 888 expression is followed by a suitable suffix describing the: 889 - digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed according to 890 the MIME Content-Type standard [RFC2045], where the "/" character 891 is to be substituted by the "-" sign; 892 - editorial staff who produced it, expressed according to its 893 Internet domain name; 894 - possible components of the expressions contained in the 895 manifestation. Such components are expressed by language-dependent 896 labels representing the whole document (in English "all") or the 897 main part of the document (in English "body") or the caption label 898 of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2, etc.); 899 - other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision text). 901 The suffix will thus read: 903 ::=[";""]* 904 ":"[";"]* 905 [":"[";"]*]? 906 [":"[";"]*]? 908 To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each main element of 909 the manifestation MAY be followed by further specifications, for 910 example as regards the version, for the archive 911 name and the electronic publisher, etc. 913 (examples: 914 the original version the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might have 915 the following manifestations with their relative uniform names: 916 - PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Italian 917 Parliament: 918 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application- 919 pdf;1.7:parlamento.it" 920 - XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF 921 format (version 1.7) of the "Figura 1" (figure 1) contained in the 922 body, edited by the Italian Senate: 924 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir- 925 2.2:senato.it:testo" 926 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application- 927 pdf;1.7:senato.it:figura.1" 929 the Spanish URN of the html format of the whole Judgement of the 930 European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 11/06/2009, in Spanish version, 931 published in the Jurifast data base in anonymized form: 932 "urn:lex:eu:tibunal.justicia:sentencia:2009-06-11;33- 933 08@original:es$text-html:juradmin.eu;jurifast:todo:anonimo") 935 Furthermore, it is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a 936 manifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are 937 involved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in 938 their own right (e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts 939 recorded in non-textual formats, such as image scans of documents. 941 In these ways, a LEX name permits: 942 - exploitation of all the advantages of an unequivocal identifier 943 that is independent of physical location; 944 - a means to provide choice among different existing manifestations 945 (e.g. XML or PDF formats, resolution degree of an image etc.) of 946 the same expression. 948 4.8 Sources of Law References 950 References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of 951 the act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document. 952 An act partition is a logical subdivision of the text, that, in a 953 structured format (as XML) fitting the document logical structure, is 954 represented by an element with its own ID; this ID aims to identify 955 the element and to locate it. In a mark-up that does not fit the 956 logical structure of the text (as HTML), generally only the starting 957 point of the partition, and not the element, is identified through a 958 label (a tag). 959 Therefore, for allowing browsers to point to a specific partition, it 960 is necessary that such partition is endowed with an unequivocal label 961 or ID within the including document and its value is the same 962 independently from the document format. 964 For enabling the construction of the partition identifier between 965 different collections of documents, specific construction rules for 966 IDs or labels SHOULD be defined and shared, within each country or 967 jurisdiction, for any document type (e.g., for legislation, the 968 paragraph 2 of the article 3 might have as label or ID the value 969 "art3;par2", similarly for case-law, paragraph 22 of the judgment in 970 Case 46/76 Bauhuis v Netherlands, might have as label or ID the value 971 "par22"). 973 Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility with 974 applications able to manage this information (e.g., returning the 975 proper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the case 976 of rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc. 977 For this purpose it is necessary that the partition identifier is 978 transmitted to the servers (resolution and application) and therefore 979 it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment, 980 which is not transmitted to the server. 982 According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is: 984 ::= ["~" ]? 986 (e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French 987 Act of 15 may 2004, n. 106, the reference is written 988 "urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15;par3"). 990 Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the 991 partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to 992 the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for 993 example, out of a database), if it is possible, only the referred 994 partition, otherwise to return the whole act. 995 Anyway, to make it effective pointing to the indicated partition 996 through a browser, the resolver SHOULD transform the partition ID of 997 each returned URL in a URI fragment; this is obtained appending to 998 URL the "#" character followed by the partition ID (in the example 999 above, the returned URL will be #art15;par3). 1001 Anyway it is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in this 1002 case only the URN document component of the reference is transmitted 1003 to the resolver, therefore the whole document will be always 1004 retrieved. 1006 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment 1008 5.1 Specifying the element of the LEX identifier 1010 Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization 1011 is assigned with a jurisdiction code, which characterizes the URNs of 1012 the source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code is 1013 assigned according to the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 (as well as TLDN or DN for 1014 the organizations) representation and it is the value of the 1015 element, which preserves cross-country uniqueness 1016 of the identifiers. 1018 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment 1020 Any country or jurisdiction, who intends to adopt this schema, 1021 identifies a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which shares 1022 and defines the structure of the optional part () 1023 of the name, according to the organization of the state or 1024 institution. For example, in a federal state a 1025 corresponding to the name of each member state (e.g. "br;sao.paolo", 1026 "br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined. 1028 The process of assigning the will be managed by each 1029 specific country or jurisdiction under the related 1030 element. 1031 In any country the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the 1032 assignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of 1033 legal measure) of the local names considering the characteristics of 1034 its own state or institution organization. 1035 Such a Registrar SHOULD establish, according to the guidelines 1036 indicated in the current document, a uniform procedure within the 1037 country or organization to define elements, to take 1038 decisions upon normalizations and finally to solve and avoid possible 1039 name collisions as well as to maintain authoritative registries of 1040 various kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). In 1041 particular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structure 1042 and naming of government entities are important to semantically-aware 1043 applications in this domain. 1044 Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct 1045 partition IDs for each document type. 1046 Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the 1047 guidelines for the construction as well as the 1048 predefined values and codes. 1050 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness 1052 Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a 1053 element assigned to the sources of law of a specific 1054 country or organization, and a assigned by the issuing 1055 authority. The main elements (authority and type of measure) of the 1056 are defined by the Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it 1057 is ensured that the constructed URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional 1058 Registrar SHOULD provide clear documentation of rules by which names 1059 are to be constructed, and SHOULD update and make accessible its 1060 registries. 1062 Any issuing authority is responsible to define formal parameters to 1063 guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a 1064 conventional internal number, which, combined with the other components (authority, measure and date), builds an unequivocal 1066 identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue 1067 of previously assigned names. 1069 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations 1071 The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the 1072 institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the LEX 1073 schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all resources 1074 identified by the assigned URNs. 1076 In particular, ITTIG-CNR, as proposer, is responsible of maintaining 1077 the uniqueness of the element; given that the 1078 is assigned on the basis of the long-held ISO 3166 1079 Alpha-2 representation of the country (or the TLD name of the 1080 organization) and that the country or organization associated code is 1081 expected to continue indefinitely, the URN also persists 1082 indefinitely. 1084 The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate 1085 the responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which 1086 is identified within each country or organization. 1088 Therefore, each authority is responsible for assigning URNs which 1089 have a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique 1090 for the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations, 1091 as well as diverse local forms of government organization, will 1092 result in different methods of assigning responsibility for different 1093 levels of the name. 1094 Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an 1095 authoritative hierarchy, it can and SHOULD be done by creating 1096 consensus around a series of published rules for the creation and 1097 administration of names by institutions and bodies that operate by 1098 means of collaboration rather than compulsion. 1100 Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging 1101 from the national down to the very local, MUST equally take 1102 responsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their 1103 scope. 1105 6 Principles of the Resolution Service 1107 6.1 The General Architecture of the System 1109 The task of the resolution service is that of associating a LEX 1110 identifier with a specific document address on the network. By 1111 contrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and 1112 enforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" namespace 1113 resolver will be expected to cope with a wide variety of "dirty" 1114 inputs, particularly those created by the automated extraction of 1115 references from incomplete or inaccurate texts. In this document, 1116 the result is a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolver 1117 design. 1119 The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental 1120 components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a 1121 series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent 1122 within a specific domain of the namespace. 1123 Through the NAPTR records of the DNS (described in [RFC3403]), the 1124 client identifies the characteristics (protocol, port, site) of the 1125 service (e.g. according to [RFC2169]) capable of associating the 1126 relative URLs with the URN in question, thereby allowing access to 1127 the document. 1129 A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of 1130 hierarchically-dependent portions of the name. 1131 Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld 1132 provided that the processes for their resolution and management are 1133 robust and are followed. 1135 For the "lex" namespace, ITTIG-CNR will maintain the root zone 1136 "lex.urn.arpa" and, in correspondence with the adhesion of a new 1137 country (e.g., "br") or organization, will update the DNS information 1138 with a new record to delegate the relative resolution. This may be 1139 obtained by a regular expression that matches the initial part of the 1140 URN (e.g., "urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g., 1141 "lex.senado.gov.br"). 1143 Likewise the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniform 1144 names (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root 1145 in the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the 1146 resolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform 1147 names. In similar way it can delegate the resolution of 1148 country/organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo") 1149 towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br"). 1151 The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base 1152 (consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a 1153 software to query the knowledge base itself. 1155 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution 1157 Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations, 1158 and incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document 1159 are thus likely to be built from textual references (this is even 1160 more frequent if they are created automatically through a specific 1161 parser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based on 1162 a relational-database, is suggested, as it will lead to a more higher 1163 flexibility in the resolution process. 1164 In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various 1165 versions and languages of the same source of law as well as the 1166 related manifestations. 1168 It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own 1169 catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each 1170 resource. 1172 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour 1174 First of all the resolver should separate the part corresponding to 1175 the partition ID, through the "~" separator, from the document name. 1177 So, the resolution process SHOULD implement a normalization of the 1178 uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some 1179 components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms, 1180 expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names, 1181 standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function 1182 authorities and types of measure registers are useful. 1184 The resolver SHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URN 1185 which corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary). 1186 Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or 1187 incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial 1188 matches) is indicated. It is worth remarking that incomplete 1189 references (not including all the elements to create the canonical 1190 uniform name) are normal and natural; for a human reader, the 1191 reference would be "completed" by contextual understanding of the 1192 reference in the document in which it occurs. 1194 In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID information 1195 to retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition, 1196 otherwise to return of the entire document. 1198 Lacking more specific indications, the resolver SHOULD select the 1199 best (most recent) version of the requested source of law, and 1200 provide all the manifestations with their related items. 1201 A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will, 1202 of course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any 1203 suggested expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date, 1204 language, format, etc.). 1206 Finally, the resolver SHOULD append to URLs the "#" character 1207 followed by partition ID, transforming it in a URI fragment for 1208 browser pointing. 1210 7 Considerations 1212 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax 1213 No special considerations. 1215 7.2 Validation mechanism 1217 The national Authority (or those it delegates) of each adhering 1218 country or organization is responsible of the definition or 1219 acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authority 1220 and type of legal measure). 1222 7.3 Scope 1224 Global interest. 1226 7.4 Namespace Considerations 1228 In collaboration with the legislative XML community, registrants 1229 carried out a preliminary study of the URI alternatives to satisfy 1230 the key requirements. 1231 The options analysed were: a private URI scheme, URL, PURL and URN. 1232 URN was considered the most appropriate URI given the requirements 1233 analysis. 1234 Advantages we would emphasize are: 1235 - greater flexibility in building the identifier; 1236 - the capacity to represent name components that are not strictly 1237 hierarchical; 1238 - the potential for clear division of the identifier into macro 1239 parts, main elements and components, using different separators; 1240 - ease of managing optional parts of a name. 1242 7.5 Community Considerations 1244 The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of 1245 information systems used in the Public Administration at the national 1246 and international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the 1247 legal information towards a federated architecture. In such an 1248 architecture, documents are directly managed by the issuing 1249 authorities, with resulting benefits in information authenticity, 1250 quality and currency. A shared identification mechanism resources 1251 guarantees that a distributed system will be as efficient and 1252 effective as a comparable centralized system. 1254 Creators of Internet content that references legal materials - 1255 including publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of 1256 legal publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace 1257 because facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by manual 1258 or automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining documents 1259 that contain such references. 1261 Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will 1262 be entitled to access the namespace and its associated application, 1263 registers, and resolution services, to facilitate document access. 1265 7.6 IANA Considerations 1267 This document includes a URN NID registration for "lex" for entry in 1268 the IANA registry of URN NIDs (see [RFC5226]), as well as the 1269 registration of the following NAPTRs record: 1271 in the URN.ARPA domain: 1272 lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" lex.ittig.cnr.it. 1274 in the URN.URI.ARPA domain: 1275 lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" lex.ittig.cnr.it. 1277 7.7 Security Considerations 1279 This document introduces no additional security considerations beyond 1280 those associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general. 1282 8 References 1284 8.1 Normative References 1286 [STD63] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 1287 10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003. 1289 [RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 1290 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 1292 [RFC3406] D Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. 1293 Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace 1294 Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002. 1296 [RFC2141] R. Moats, K. R. Sollins, "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1297 1997. 1299 [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform 1300 Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 1301 3986, January 2005. 1303 [RFC3403] M. Mealling, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS), 1304 Part Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database, RFC 1305 3403, October 2002. 1307 [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an 1308 IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, 1309 May 2008 1311 [ISO3166] ISO 3166, "Country name codes", ISO 3166-1:1997. 1313 [ISO639-1] ISO 639-1, "Codes for the representation of names of 1314 languages" - Part 1: alpha-2 code, 2003. 1316 [ISO639-2] ISO 639-2, "Codes for the representation of names of 1317 languages" - Part 2: alpha-3 code, 1999. 1319 [RFC2169] R. Daniel, "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN", 1320 RFC 2169, June 1997 1322 [RFC2045] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail 1323 Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message 1324 Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. 1326 8.2 Informative References 1328 [SPIN] P.L. Spinosa, "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian 1329 Legal Documents", May, 2006 1330 http://www.nir.it/sito_area3- 1331 ap_stan_assegnazione_nomi.htm 1333 [FRAN] E. Francesconi, "Technologies for European Integration. 1334 Standards-based Interoperability of Legal Information 1335 Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-3, European Press Academic 1336 Publishing, 2007. 1338 9 Acknowledgments 1340 The authors of this document wish to thank all the supporters for 1341 giving suggestions and comments. 1342 They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community for the 1343 interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group 1344 "Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian 1345 NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [SPIN]. 1346 The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the 1347 Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for 1348 his contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful 1349 discussions which greatly improved the final draft. The authors wish 1350 to specially thank Marc van Opijnen (Dutch Ministry of Security and 1351 Justice) for his valuable comments on LEX specifications which 1352 contributed to improve the final result, as well as for the common 1353 work aimed to harmonize ECLI and LEX standards. Thanks also to Joao 1354 Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system analyst of the Brazilian 1355 Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, information management 1356 consultant, for their detailed comments on the first drafts of this 1357 document, which provided significant hints to the final version of 1358 the standard, and to Robert Richards of the Legal Information 1359 Institute (Cornell University Law School), promoter and maintainer of 1360 the Legal Informatics Research social network, as well as to the 1361 members of this network, for their valuable comments on this 1362 proposal. 1363 Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly 1364 contributed to the first drafting of this document. 1366 10 Author's Addresses 1368 PierLuigi Spinosa 1369 Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) 1370 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) 1371 Via de' Barucci, 20 1372 50127 Firenze 1373 Italy 1374 Telephone: +39 055 43995 1375 e-mail: pierluigi.spinosa@ittig.cnr.it 1377 Enrico Francesconi 1378 Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) 1379 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) 1380 Via de' Barucci, 20 1381 50127 Firenze 1382 Italy 1383 Telephone: +39 055 43995 1384 e-mail: enrico.francesconi@ittig.cnr.it 1386 Caterina Lupo 1387 (ICT consultant) 1388 Via San Fabiano, 25 1389 00165 Roma 1390 Telephone: +39 3382632348 1391 e-mail: caterina.lupo@gmail.com 1393 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of the "lex" 1394 namespace 1396 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1397 * General Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) 1398 * NID = namespace 1399 * NSS = specific name 1400 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1401 ::= "urn:"":" 1403 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1404 * Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) of the "lex" namespace 1405 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1406 ::= "lex" 1408 ::= "urn:lex:" 1410 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1411 * Structure of a "lex" specific name 1412 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1413 ::= ":" 1415 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1416 * Structure of the element 1417 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1418 ::= [";"]* 1420 ::= {2,4} | ([]*) 1422 ::= []* 1424 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1425 * Structure of the element 1426 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1427 ::= ["@"]?["$"]? 1429 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1430 * Structure of the element 1431 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1432 ::= ":"":"
[":"]* 1434 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1435 * Structure of the element 1436 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1437 ::= ["+"]* 1439 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1440 ::= []* 1442 ::= []* 1444 ::= []* 1446 ::= []* 1448 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1449 * Structure of the element 1450 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1451 ::= [";"]* 1453 ::= []* 1455 ::= []* 1457 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1458 * Structure of the
element 1459 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1460
::= (|)";" 1462 ::= [","]* 1464 ::= []* 1466 ::= ([","]*)| 1468 ::= [|]* 1470 ::= "lex-"+ 1472 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1473 * Structure of the element 1474 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1475 ::= [";"]* 1477 ::= []* 1479 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1480 * Structure of the element 1481 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1483 ::= [":"]? 1485 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1486 * Structure of the element 1487 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1488 ::= (|) 1489 [";"(|)]* 1491 ::= 1493 ::= 1495 ::= []* 1497 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1498 * Structure of the element 1499 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1501 ::= {2,3} 1503 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1504 * Structure of the element 1505 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1506 ::= [";""]* 1507 ":"[";""]* 1508 [":"[";"]*]? 1509 [":"[";"]*]? 1511 ::= [|"-"]* 1513 ::= [|"-"]* 1515 ::= [|"-"]* 1517 ::= [|"-"]* 1519 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1520 * Structure of the date 1521 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1522 ::= "-""-" 1524 ::= {4} 1525 ::= {2} 1526 ::= {2} 1528 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1529 * Allowed characters 1530 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1531 ::= | | | 1533 ::= | "." 1535 ::= | | 1536 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | 1537 "i" | "j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | 1538 "q" | "r" | "s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | 1539 "y" | "z" 1541 ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | 1542 "8" | "9" 1544 ::= ("%" ( | )){1,6} 1546 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" 1548 ::= "-" | "_" | "'" | "=" | "(" | ")" 1550 ::= ":" | "@" | "$" | "+" | ";" | "," | "~" 1552 ::= "*" | "!" 1554 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level 1556 B1 The element 1558 B1.1 Indication of the Authority 1560 The element of a uniform name may indicate, in the 1561 various cases: 1562 - the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More 1563 specifically, the authority adopting the provision or enacting it; 1564 - the institution where the provision is registered, known and 1565 referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills 1566 identified through the reference to the Chamber where they are 1567 presented); 1568 - the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the 1569 legal provision even when this is issued by another authority 1570 (e.g., the statute of a Body); 1571 - the entity that proposed the legal material not yet included in the 1572 institutional process (e.g. a proposed bill written by a a 1573 political party). 1575 B1.2 Multiple Issuers 1577 Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g., 1578 inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the 1579 element contains all the issuing parties (properly 1580 separated), as follows: 1582 ::= ["+"]* 1584 (e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances") 1586 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer 1588 Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an 1589 institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g., 1590 Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance 1591 with the institution's hierarchical structure, from the more general 1592 to more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the 1593 relative office (President, Director, etc.). 1594 Therefore, the structure of the issuer is as follows: 1596 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1598 (e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager") 1600 B1.4 Indication of the Body 1601 Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing 1602 authority is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional 1603 Acts) and normally it is not indicated in the references. 1604 Just like in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is 1605 limited to the minimum in relation to the type of measure. 1606 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act") 1608 B1.5 Indication of the Function 1610 Generally, the component is indicated, sometimes instead 1611 of the body itself: 1612 - in case of political, representative or elective offices 1613 (e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of 1614 "university.oxford;rectorship:decree"); 1615 - when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general 1616 manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to 1617 associate a specific internal institutional structure to 1618 (e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager"). 1620 It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in 1621 charge of an institution (typically, a general director); in this 1622 case, only the structure and not the person in charge is indicated 1623 (e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration"). 1625 The function MUST be indicated when: 1626 - it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the 1627 structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy 1628 director, etc.); 1629 - the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the 1630 indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity. 1632 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority 1634 Acts and measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or 1635 enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally 1636 indicated "state" (expressed in each country official language) as 1637 authority; the same convention is used for constitutions, codes 1638 (civil, criminal, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc) and 1639 international treaties. 1641 B2 The element 1643 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure 1645 In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory. 1646 This makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the 1647 measure (e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even 1648 if it is widely used. 1650 When the authority-measure combination clearly identifies a specific 1651 document, the type of measure is not defined through attributes 1652 referring to the enacting authority. 1653 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act") 1655 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure 1657 In the element, it is usually sufficient to indicate the 1658 type of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather 1659 than through the formal details (date and number), may be made 1660 through some of their characteristics such as the subject-matter 1661 covered (e.g., accounting regulations), nicknames referring to the 1662 promoter (e.g., Bassanini Act) or to the topic of the act (e.g., 1663 Bankruptcy Law), etc.. 1664 In these cases, the type of measure MAY be followed by further 1665 specifications useful in referencing even if the details are lacking: 1667 ::=[";"]* 1669 (e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy") 1671 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References 1673 There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually 1674 cited in different ways, for example through the legislative act 1675 introducing them into the legal order (President's decree, 1676 legislative decree, etc.) or through their legislative category 1677 (regulations, consolidation, etc.). 1678 In order to ensure, in all the cases, the validity of the references, 1679 an alias that takes into account the measure category is associated 1680 to the uniform name, representing the legislative form. 1681 (e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and 1682 "state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358"). 1684 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases 1686 The sources of law including different normative references are 1687 usually introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing 1688 of an act, which they are either included or attached to. It is, 1689 therefore, necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of 1690 the same document. Specifically, the different measures can be: 1691 - adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by 1692 the provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the 1693 correlation is established between two uniform names each featuring 1694 a completely different element 1695 (e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and 1696 "ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic. 1697 planning:decree"); 1699 - issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing 1700 authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers to 1701 the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two aliases 1702 share the first part of the authority; 1703 (e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and 1704 "municipality.firenze;council:deliberation"); 1705 - issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own 1706 competence; in this case the element is the same 1707 (e.g., "ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools. 1708 telematic.process" and "ministry.justice:decree"). 1710 B3 The
element 1712 B3.1 Indication of the Details 1714 The details of a source of law usually include the date of the 1715 enactment and the identification number (inclusion in the body of 1716 laws, register, protocol, etc.). 1717 Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which 1718 the number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a 1719 measure has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these 1720 reasons, the set up of both elements (date and number) includes 1721 multiple values. 1723 Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents 1724 through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number) 1725 rather than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and 1726 never used in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV 1727 legislature). In these cases, the component is used in 1728 substitution of the component . 1730 Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific 1731 sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform 1732 name, which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date- 1733 number has the following form: 1735
::=(|)";" 1737 (e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislature;s.2544") 1739 B3.2 Multiple Dates 1741 Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one 1742 date; in this case, in the field all the given dates are to 1743 be reported and indicated as follows: 1745 ::=[","]* 1747 (e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30, 1748 1999- January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name: 1749 "personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13; 1750 1-p-2000"). 1752 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures 1754 Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non- 1755 unequivolcal identifier, because several measures of the same type 1756 can exist, issued on the same day by the same authority. 1757 To ensure that the uniform name is unambiguous, the field 1758 MUST, in any case, contain a discriminating element, which can be any 1759 identifier used internally, and not published, by the authority 1760 (e.g., protocol). 1761 If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier 1762 MUST be created for the name system. In order to easily differentiate 1763 it, such number is preceded by the string "lex-": 1765 ::="lex-"[]+ 1767 (e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3") 1769 It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a 1770 discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities, 1771 only one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to 1772 the document (e.g., the proponent). 1773 The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g., 1774 the Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are 1775 recognized by the univocal identifying label printed on the paper. 1776 Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in 1777 an official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear 1778 advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found. 1780 B3.4 Multiple Numbers 1782 Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by 1783 a set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills). 1784 In this case, in the field, all the identifiers are 1785 reported, according to the following structure: 1787 ::=[","]* 1789 (e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97") 1790 The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g., 1791 ":"), including the comma, cannot exist inside the , and 1792 therefore MUST be turned into "-". 1793 This conversion may imply that the uniform name of the document is no 1794 more unique (e.g., removal 123-BIS and return 123/BIS of the bill 123 1795 both are identified as "123-bis"); in this case, it is necessary to 1796 add a specific distinctive ending (e.g., "123-bis-removal" and "123- 1797 bis-return"). 1799 B4 The element 1801 B4.1 Formal Annexes 1803 Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may 1804 be referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to 1805 which they are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the 1806 main document as well as each formal individual annex is univocally 1807 identified. 1809 Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a 1810 legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In any 1811 case, they MUST be given a uniform name, which includes the uniform 1812 name of the source of law to which they are attached, and a suffix 1813 which identifies the annex itself. 1815 The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the 1816 annex and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which 1817 will facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is 1818 missing: 1820 ::=[";"]* 1822 (e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1823 borders.park") 1825 The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved 1826 (e.g. ":") must not be featured in the and therefore MUST 1827 be turned into ".". 1829 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes 1831 When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers 1832 are created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those 1833 of the annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it). 1835 (e.g., Table 1 attached to Attachment A of the preceding legal act 1836 has the following uniform name: 1837 "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1838 borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories"). 1840 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 1841 Expression 1843 C1 The element 1845 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document 1847 The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the 1848 following forms: 1849 - "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the modified 1850 parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts) and their 1851 related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside one single 1852 object (e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be able, in a 1853 dynamic way, to appear in different forms according to the 1854 requested date of effectiveness; 1855 - "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object 1856 is created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each 1857 object is, therefore, characterized by its own period of validity. 1858 In any case all the versions SHOULD be linked one another and 1859 immediately navigable. 1861 C1.2 Identification of the Version 1863 In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to 1864 the uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific 1865 suffix. 1866 Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and 1867 includes, first and foremost, one of the following elements: 1868 - the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account; 1869 - the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the 1870 errata corrige, is published; 1871 - a specification which must identify the reason concerning the 1872 amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process), 1873 for the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills). 1875 Anyway it is possible to add further specifications that will 1876 distinguish each of the different versions of the text to guarantee 1877 identifier unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the 1878 in-force or effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text 1879 itself (e.g., when the amendments introduced by an act are applied at 1880 different times) or different events occurring in the same date. 1882 ::=(|) 1883 [";"(|)]* 1885 where: 1886 - contains the issuing date of the last considered 1887 amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the 1888 original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is 1889 effective and the information system produces one version for each 1890 of them, such element contains the string "original"; 1891 - any information useful to identify unambiguously 1892 and univocally the version; 1893 - contains the date in which a version is put into 1894 force, is effective or is published; 1895 - is a name assigned to the event producing a further version 1896 (e.g., amendment, decision, etc.). 1898 The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a 1899 version because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data). 1901 (e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19" 1902 identifies the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No. 1903 12" with the amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998, 1904 No. 51", without any indication of its actual entry into force. The 1905 same uniform name with the additional ending ";1999-01-01" indicates 1906 the in-force or effective version starting in a different date (from 1907 1/1/99). 1909 For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the 1910 effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a 1911 new uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the 1912 identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case 1913 of a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate 1914 every uniform name with the period of time during which such a name 1915 together with its corresponding text is to be considered valid. 1917 (e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941, 1918 no. 12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of 1919 02/19/1998, no. 51", contains the name of the original 1920 "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12" as well as the name of the updated 1921 version "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19"). 1923 Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a 1924 new version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the 1925 creation of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order 1926 to guarantee their alignment (i.e., the main document, the 1927 attachments and annexes). 1929 Attachment D -- Http-based LEX identifier 1931 D1 Http-based URI 1933 Http-based URIs have been recently promoted as stable and location- 1934 independent identifiers [RFC3986]. According to this syntax, at all 1935 levels, resource IDs belong to the http scheme and are normally 1936 resolved using mechanisms widely available in browsers and web 1937 servers. 1939 Such kind of identifiers have been recently suggested also within the 1940 set of principles and technologies, known as "Linked Data" as a basic 1941 infrastructure of the semantic web to enable data sharing and reuse 1942 on a massive scale. 1944 Such principles, introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in his Web 1945 architecture note "Linked Data" 1946 (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html), are synthetically: 1948 - Use URIs as names for things; 1949 - Use HTTP URIs, so that people can look up those names; 1950 - When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the 1951 standards (RDF, SPARQL); 1952 - Include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more 1953 things. 1955 The second principle is the one more affecting a discussion about the 1956 scheme to be used for legal resources identification; in particular 1957 to the aim of guaranteeing the access to the resources, http-based 1958 identifiers are suggested. This property is addressed as 1959 "dereferenceability", meaning a resource retrieval mechanism using 1960 any of the Internet protocols, e.g. HTTP, so that HTTP clients, for 1961 instance, can look up the URI using the HTTP protocol and retrieve a 1962 description of the resource that is identified by the URI. 1963 Such property is available for http-based identifiers either with or 1964 without a resolver allowing a 1-to-1 association with the "best copy" 1965 of the resource; in the legal domain it is related to the unique act 1966 manifestation of a specific publisher and format. 1968 The same property holds for URN identifiers, as long as a resolver is 1969 properly set-up, allowing 1-to-N association with more manifestations 1970 of a resource (act). 1972 Therefore an http-based identifier, stable and independent from the 1973 resource location, can be effectively used when a single publisher 1974 provides a specific item of this resource (1-to-1 mapping between an 1975 identifier and manifestation of an act). The independence from the 1976 resource location is managed by a "303 Redirect" status code (see 1977 http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/#htoc11) which may require a 1978 resolver able to access the physical location of the resource (e.g., 1979 through submitting a query to a database). A URN identifier, stable 1980 and independent form the resource location, can be effectively used 1981 within a federative environment where different publishers can 1982 provide different items of the same act (1-to-N mapping between an 1983 identifier and different manifestations of an act). 1985 In order to comply with the Linked Data principles and to build http- 1986 based identifiers using the LEX namespace specifications, the LEX 1987 schema and metadata set can be serialized according to an http URI 1988 syntax. It is worthwhile to mention that URN focuses on identifying 1989 an act, while Linked Data principles focus on identifying a resource 1990 on the Web. 1992 In the following sections the http-based serialization of the urn LEX 1993 schema is reported. 1995 D2 The http-based LEX identifier structure 1997 The http-based hierarchical structure of the LEX identifier is the 1998 following: 2000 "http://""/lex/""/" 2002 where: 2003 - represents the name of the organization server 2004 publishing the resource; 2005 - "lex" is the equivalent of the URN namespace ID and provides the 2006 reference to the naming convention adopted; 2007 - and share meaning and syntax of the 2008 corresponding components in the LEX specifications. 2010 The element follows the syntax rules of the 2011 corresponding element in the URN specification, therefore it has the 2012 following structure: 2014 ::=[";"]* 2016 The character ";" still separates the identification code of the 2017 country or jurisdiction where the source of law is issued 2018 () from any possible administrative hierarchical 2019 sub-structures defined by each country or organisation according to 2020 its own legal system. 2022 The follows the FRBR model as implemented by the LEX 2023 specifications, therefore its http-based structure is the following: 2025 ::="/@/""/$/" 2027 D3 The http-based LEX identifier at Work Level 2029 According to the corresponding level of the URN version, the http- 2030 based LEX identifier structure at work level is the following: 2032 ::="/""/"
["/"]* 2034 The elements , and follow the same 2035 syntax rules of the corresponding elements in the URN specification. 2037 Examples of http-based identifiers at level, corresponding to 2038 the urn-based examples in Section 4.4, are the following: 2040 http:///lex/it/stato/legge/2006-05-14;22 2041 http:///lex/uk/ministry.justice/decree/1999-10-07;45 2042 http:///lex/ch;glarus/regiere/erlass/2007-10-15;963 2043 http:///lex/es/tribunal.supremo/decision/2001-09-28;68 2044 http:///lex/fr/assemblee.nationale/proposition.loi/ 2045 13.legislature;1762 2046 http:///lex/br/estado/constituicao/1988-10-05;lex-1 2047 http:///lex/fsf.org/free.software.foundation/ 2048 general.public.license/2007-06-29;lex-1 2049 http:///lex/nl/hoge.raad/besluit/2008-04-01;bc8581 2051 D4 The http-based LEX identifier at Expression Level 2053 According to the corresponding level of the URN version, the http- 2054 based LEX structure at expression level is the following: 2056 ::=["/"]? 2058 The elements and follow the same syntax rules of 2059 the corresponding elements in the URN specification. 2061 Examples of http-based identifiers at expression level, corresponding 2062 to the urn-based examples in Section 4.6, are the following: 2064 http:///lex/ch/etat/loi/2006-05-14;22/@/originel/fr 2065 (original version in French) 2066 http:///lex/ch/staat/gesetz/2006-05-14;22/@/original/de 2067 (original version in German) 2068 http:///lex/ch/etat/loi/2006-05-14;22/@/2008-03-12/fr 2069 (amended version in French) 2070 http:///lex/ch/staat/gesetz/2006-05-14;22/@/2008-03-12/de 2071 (amended version in German) 2072 http:///lex/be/conseil.etat/decision/2008-07-09;185.273 2073 /@/originel/fr 2074 (original version in French of a Belgian decision) 2076 D5 The http-based LEX identifier at Manifestation Level 2078 Information provided in the URN version at manifestation level is 2079 differently accommodated in the corresponding level of the http-based 2080 LEX identifier. 2082 The element, reported at manifestation level in the urn- 2083 based LEX version, is an information already contained in the of the http-based LEX identifier, therefore it is omitted in 2085 the elements. 2086 Similarly the element is omitted since it loses its meaning 2087 which would derived from the comparison between different 2088 manifestations. 2090 The element is reported as unique extension of the data 2091 format in which the manifestation is drafted. The value is compliant 2092 with the registered file extensions, thus it can be "pdf" for PDF, 2093 "doc" for MS Word, "xml" for XML documents, "tif" for tiff image 2094 format, etc. 2096 Therefore the http-based LEX structure at manifestation level is the 2097 following: 2099 ::=[[";"]*]"." 2101 The element follows the same syntax rules of the 2102 corresponding element in the URN specification. 2104 Examples of http-based identifiers at manifestation level, 2105 corresponding to the urn-based examples in Section 4.7 are the 2106 following: 2108 http://www.senato.it/lex/it/stato/legge/2000-04-03;56/$/testo.xml 2109 (body of the Italian law 3 April 2000, n. 56, published by the 2110 Italian Senate in xml format) 2111 http://www.senato.it/lex/it/stato/legge/2000-04-03;56/$/figura.1.pdf 2112 (Figure 1 in PDF format of the Italian law 3 April 2000, n. 56, 2113 published by the Italian Senate) 2114 http://www.juradmin.eu/jurifast/lex/eu/tibunal.justicia/sentencia/ 2115 2009-06-11;33-08/@/original/es/$/todo.html 2116 (the Spanish http-based LEX identifier of the html format of the 2117 whole Judgement of the European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 2118 11/06/2009, in Spanish version, published by the Juriadmin site in 2119 the Jurifast data base) 2120 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/lex/eu/commission/directive/ 2121 2010-03-09;2010-19-EU/$/body.xml 2122 (body of the EU Directive n. 2010-19-EU, dated 2010-03-09, in its 2123 XML format published by Eur-Lex)