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Checking references for intended status: Informational ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 2141 (Obsoleted by RFC 8141) ** Obsolete normative reference: RFC 3406 (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: November 30, 2013 E. Francesconi 5 ITTIG/CNR 6 C. Lupo 7 (ICT consultant) 8 September 17, 2013 10 A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace 11 for Sources of Law (LEX) 12 draft-spinosa-urn-lex-08.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 November 30, 2013. 37 Copyright Notice 39 Copyright (c) 2013 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 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 15 78 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 79 3.7 Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 80 3.8 Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 81 3.9 Ordinal Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 82 4 Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier . . . . . . . . . 15 83 4.1 Basic Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 84 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation . . . . . . . . . 16 85 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 86 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level . . . 17 87 4.5 Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 92 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment . . . . . . . . . . 23 93 5.1 Specifying the element of the LEX 94 identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 95 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment . . . . . . 23 96 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 97 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations . . . . . . . . . . 24 98 6 Principles of the Resolution Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 99 6.1 The General Architecture of the System . . . . . . . . . 25 100 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 101 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 102 7 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 103 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 104 7.2 Validation mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 105 7.3 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 106 7.4 Namespace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 107 7.5 Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 108 7.6 IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 109 7.7 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 110 8 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 111 8.1 Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 112 8.2 Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 113 9 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 114 10 Author's Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 115 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of 116 the "lex" namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 117 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level . 36 118 B1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 119 B1.1 Indication of the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 120 B1.2 Multiple Issuers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 121 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 122 B1.4 Indication of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 123 B1.5 Indication of the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 124 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 125 B2 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 126 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure . . . 37 127 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure . . . . . . 38 128 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative 129 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 130 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases . 38 131 B3 The
element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 132 B3.1 Indication of the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 133 B3.2 Multiple Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 134 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 135 B3.4 Multiple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 136 B4 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 137 B4.1 Formal Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 138 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 139 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 140 Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 141 C1 The element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 142 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document . . . . . . 42 143 C1.2 Identification of the Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 144 Attachment D -- Http-based LEX identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 145 D1 Http-based URI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 146 D2 The http-based LEX identifier structure . . . . . . . . . . . 45 147 D3 The http-based LEX identifier at Work Level . . . . . . . . . 46 148 D4 The http-based LEX identifier at Expression Level . . . . . . 46 149 D5 The http-based LEX identifier at Manifestation Level . . . . . 47 151 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 - bidirectional 325 - persistent 326 - location-independent, and 327 - language-neutral. 328 These qualities will facilitate legal document management as well as 329 provide a mechanism of stable cross-collections and cross-country 330 references. 332 Transparency means that given an act and its relevant metadata 333 (issuing authority, type of measure, etc.) it is possible to create 334 the related urn identifier. Moreover this identifier is able to 335 unequivocally identify the related act. These two properties makes 336 the identification system bidirectional (from an act to its URN and 337 from a URN to the related act). 339 Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that will 340 promote adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to 341 official-language requirements. The proposed standard will provide 342 useful guidance to both public and private groups that create, 343 promulgate, and publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize 344 the potential for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, while 345 preserving sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document types 346 and to respect the need for local control of collections by an 347 equally diverse assortment of administrative entities. 349 As usual, the problem is to provide the right amount guidance at the 350 core of the standard while providing sufficient flexibility to cover 351 a wide variety of needs. The proposed LEX standard does this by 352 splitting the identifier into parts. The first part uses a 353 predetermined standard ("country/jurisdiction name standard") to 354 specify the country (or more generally the jurisdiction) of origin 355 for the legal document being identified; the remainder ("local name") 356 is intended for local use in identifying documents issued in that 357 country or jurisdiction. This second part depends only on sources of 358 law identification system operating in that nation and it is mainly 359 composed by a formalized information related to the enacting 360 authority, the type of measure, the details and possibly the annex. 362 The identification system based on uniform names MUST include: 363 - a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously 364 any addressed source of law, namely legislation, case law and 365 administrative acts, issued by any authority (intergovernmental, 366 supranational, national, regional and local) at any time (past, 367 present and future); 368 - a resolution mechanism - in a distributed environment - that ties a 369 uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding 370 resources. 371 This document only considers the first of these requirements. It also 372 contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution 373 service and to the corresponding software. 375 1.5 Linking a LEX Name to a Document 377 The LEX name is linked to the document through meta-information which 378 may be specified: 379 - internally to the document itself through a specific element within 380 an XML schema or by an HTML META tag; 381 - externally by means of an RDF triple, a specific attribute in a 382 database, etc. 383 One of these modalities is necessary for enabling automated 384 construction and updating of catalogues (distributed and centralized) 385 and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name 386 of a document with its physical location(s). The standard assumes no 387 particular relationship between the originator of the document, its 388 publisher, and the implementer of catalogues or resolution services. 389 They may be the same entity, or not. 391 1.6 Use of LEX Names in References 392 LEX names will be used on a large scale in references as a HREF 393 attribute value of the hypertext link to the referred document. 394 This link can be created in two ways: 395 - by manually inserting, in the referring document, the link with the 396 uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure especially for 397 documents that are already on-line; 398 - by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily) 399 the link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a 400 text: this is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a 401 certain percentage of errors, since references are not always 402 accurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless be 403 acceptable for already published documents. 404 In any case, whatever the method adopted is, new documents produced 405 in XML format compliant with the relative DTD/XMLSchema, SHOULD 406 express references through the uniform name of the document referred 407 to. 409 1.7 Definitions 411 According to this document, the following terms are used in the 412 following meaning: 413 - Source of Law: 414 is a general concept, and is used to refer to legislation, case 415 law, regulations and administrative acts. In its broadest sense, 416 the source of law is anything that can be conceived of as the 417 originator of 'erga omnes' legal rules. In this document "source of 418 law" refers also to acts during their formation cycle as bills that 419 might or might not become sources of law; 420 - Registrar: 421 is an organization which shares and defines in any country or 422 jurisdiction the assignment of the main components of the resource 423 identifier through which its uniqueness is guaranteed. This task 424 includes the definition of possible jurisdiction unit and the 425 primary elements (issuing authority and type of legal measure) of 426 uniform name, according to the characteristics of its own state or 427 institution organization. 429 1.8 Terminology 431 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 432 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 433 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 435 2 Specification Template 437 2.1 Namespace ID 439 "lex" requested according to [RFC3406]. 441 2.2 Registration Information 443 Version Number: 1.0 444 Date: 2011-04-01 446 Declared registrant of the namespace: 448 Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG) 449 Italian National Research Council (CNR) 450 Via de' Barucci, 20 451 50127 Florence 452 Italy 454 e-mail: lex@ittig.cnr.it 456 2.3 Syntax Used in this Document 458 This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is 459 based on the BNF (Backus-Naur Form) meta-language. In particular: 460 - elements are included between angle brackets ("<" and ">"); 461 - an element is separated from its specification by the string "::="; 462 - alternative elements are separated from each other by a vertical 463 slash ("|"); 464 - character strings are enclosed in quotes (" and "); 465 - optional parts are enclosed by square brackets ("[" and "]"); 466 - a group of elements is enclosed by round brackets ("(" and ")"); 467 - a symbol or an expression following an element or a group of 468 elements indicates a factor of repetition, and, as in the regular 469 expressions, takes the following formats: 470 - ? : 0 or 1 time; 471 - + : 1 or more times; 472 - * : 0 or more times; 473 - {n} : times; 474 - {n,m}: from to times. 476 2.4 Identifier structure 478 The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows: 480 "urn:lex:" 482 where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows: 484 ::=":" 486 where: 488 is the part providing the identification of the 489 jurisdiction, generally corresponding to the country, where the 490 source of law is issued. It is also possible to represent 491 international organizations (either states or public administrations 492 or private entities); 494 is the uniform name of the source of law in the country 495 or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal structure is common 496 to the already adopted schemas. It is able to represent all the 497 aspects of an intellectual production, as it is a legal document, 498 from its initial idea, through its evolution during the time, to its 499 realisation by different means (paper, digital, etc.). 501 The element is composed of two specific fields: 503 ::=[";"]* 505 where: 507 is usually the identification code of the country 508 where the source of law is issued; this code follows the standard 509 [ISO3166] Alpha-2 (it=Italy, fr=France, dk=Denmark, etc.) which 510 usually is identical to the country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). In 511 case such codes are not identical (as for United Kingdom, whose ISO 512 3166 code is .gb while its ccTLD is .uk), one of them is chosen as 513 . 514 In case of multi-national (e.g., European Union) or international 515 (e.g., United Nations, Free Software Foundation) organizations the 516 Top Level Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain Name (e.g., 517 "un.org", "wto.int") is used instead of ISO 3166 code. In case such 518 multi-national or international organization does not have a 519 registered domain, in order to avoid ambiguities or collisions with 520 actual domains, a domain name (according to the english acronym of 521 the organization name) under the virtual domain "lex" is used. For 522 example, the jurisdiction code of the European Economic Community is 523 "eec.lex". 524 In case of country code re-assignement (as "ai" given to Anguilla), 525 in any URN this country code will be associated to the new 526 jurisdiction, therefore the related documents will be identified by 527 such new jurisdiction country code. Therefore the previous 528 jurisdiction ("ai" as associated to French Afar and Issas), MUST use 529 another country code and, at the same time, MUST change the 530 jurisdiction code element of each legacy URN identifier. 531 A possible choice for jurisdiction renaming in legacy URNs can be one 532 of the following: 533 - keeping the old country code and appending a date interval 534 corresponding to the period of validity of the code for this 535 jurisdiction (ex: "ai-1974-1983")(recommended solution); 536 - changing the old country code with the new code assigned to the 537 same country/jurisdiction (ex: "ai" into "dj" (Djibouti)); 538 - changing the old 2-letters country code with the 3-letters one (ex: 539 "ai" into "afi"). 541 are the possible administrative hierarchical sub- 542 structures defined by each country or organisation according to its 543 own legal system. This additional information can be used where two 544 or more levels of legislative or judicial production exist (e.g., 545 federal, state and municipality level) and the same bodies may be 546 present in each jurisdiction. Then acts of the same type issued by 547 similar authorities in different areas differ for the jurisdiction- 548 unit specification. An example can be the following: 549 "br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government), 550 "br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of SU+00E3o Paulo state) and 551 "br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo: decreto" (decree of Campinas 552 municipality). 554 Examples of law sources identifiers are: 556 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456 (Italian act) 557 urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-12-06;321 (French act) 558 urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123 (Spanish act) 559 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 (Glarus Swiss Canton 560 decree) 561 urn:lex:eu:commission:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-EU (EU Commission 562 Directive) 563 urn:lex:us:federal.supreme.court:decision:1963-03-18;372.us.335 (US 564 FSC decision) 565 urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273 (Decision of the 566 Belgian Council of State) 568 3 General Syntax of the LEX Identifier 570 3.1 Allowed and Not Allowed Characters 572 These characters are defined in accordance with the [RFC2141] "URN 573 Syntax". For various reasons, later explained, in the "lex" 574 only a sub-set of characters is allowed. All other characters are 575 either eliminated or converted. 577 For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please 578 see Attachment A. 580 3.2 Reserved Characters 582 These characters MUST always and uniquely be used for the assigned 583 purpose. 584 The first category includes those characters bearing a specific 585 meaning in the general creation of the URI (Uniform Resource 586 Identifier)[RFC3986]: 588 "%" "/" "?" "#" 590 The following characters instead are reserved in the specific "lex" 591 namespace: 593 - "@" separator of the expression, that contains information on 594 version and language; 595 - "$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on 596 format, editor, etc.; 597 - ":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity; 598 - ";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an 599 element at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a 600 specification; 601 - "+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g., 602 multiple authorities); 603 - "," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the 604 main elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g., 605 multiple numbers); 606 - "~" separator of the partition identifier in references (e.g., 607 paragraph of an article); 608 - "*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions. 610 3.3 Case sensitivity 612 Although the case does not change the logical identification of the 613 source of law and therefore the names belonging to the "lex" 614 namespace should be considered functionally equivalent independently 615 from the case, nevertheless to take advantage of memory caching and 616 simplify the resolution process the specific name MUST be always 617 created in lower case 618 (e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry"). 620 3.4 National Characters and Diacritic Signs 622 In order to exploit DNS as a routing tool towards the proper 623 resolution system, to keep editing and communication more simple and 624 to avoid character percent-encoding, it is strongly recommended that 625 national characters and diacritic signs are turned into base ASCII 626 characters (e.g., the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" converted into 627 "sanita", the French term "ministU+00E8re" converted into 628 "ministere"), in case by transliteration (e.g. "MU+00FCnchen" 629 converted into "muenchen"). 630 If such conversion is not acceptable by a specific jurisdiction and 631 therefore it is used the UTF-8 %-encoding [STD63], it is necessary: 632 - to convert the non-ASCII characters to IDN encoding, using the 634 [RFC3492] punycode translation (es: mU+00FCnchen into xn--mnchen- 635 3ya), or 636 - to create a routing service relying to a software, out of DNS, 637 addressing a proper resolution service. 638 However it is up to the specific jurisdiction to choose the preferred 639 solution. 641 3.5 Replacement of Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks 643 All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.), 644 the punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes, 645 dashes, etc.) are eliminated. The words left are connected each other 646 by a dot (".") which substitutes the "space". 647 (e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning" 648 becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning") 650 3.6 Abbreviation Expansion 652 All abbreviations indicating institutions (e.g., Min.), structures 653 (e.g., Dept.), or legal measures (e.g., reg.), MUST be expanded. 654 (e.g., "Min." must be reported as "ministry") 656 3.7 Acronyms 658 The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in 659 uniform names (the same acronym may indicate two different 660 institutions or structures), therefore their expansion is strongly 661 recommended. 662 (e.g., "FAO" is to be expanded as "food.agriculture.organization") 664 3.8 Date Format 666 Dates are expressed by numbers in the [ISO8601] format: 668 yyyy-mm-dd 670 (e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02") 672 3.9 Ordinal Numbers 674 Any ordinal number included in a component of a document name (e.g., 675 in the description of an institution body) MUST be indicated in 676 Arabic numerals, regardless to the original expression: whether in 677 Roman numerals, or with an adjective, or in Arabic numeral with apex, 678 etc. (IV, third, 1U+00B0, 2^, etc.). 679 (e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4") 681 4 Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier 682 4.1 Basic Principles 684 The uniform name must identify one and only one document (more 685 precisely a "bibliographic entity") and is created in such a way that 686 it is: 687 - self-explanatory ; 688 - identifiable through simple and clear rules; 689 - compatible with the practice commonly used for references; 690 - able to be created by references in the text, automatically (by 691 parser) or manually; 692 - representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of 693 the document. 695 4.2 Model of Sources of Law Representation 697 According to FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) 698 model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library 699 Associations and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any 700 intellectual production, 4 fundamental entities (or aspects) can be 701 specified. 703 The first 2 entities reflect its contents: 704 - work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it 705 identifies a source of law both in its being (as it has been issued 706 or proposed) and in its becoming (as it is modified over time); 707 - expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a 708 work; in our case it identifies every different (original or up-to- 709 date) version of the source of law over time and/or language in 710 which the text is expressed; 711 while the other 2 entities relate to its form: 712 - manifestation: identifies a concrete realisation of an expression; 713 in our case it identifies realizations in different media 714 (printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF, etc.), or 715 other publishing characteristics; 716 - item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case it 717 identifies individual physical copies as they are found in 718 particular physical locations. 720 In this document the FRBR model has been interpreted for the specific 721 characteristics of the legal domain. In particular, a part from the 722 language which does produce a specific expression, the discriminative 723 criterion between expression and manifestation is based on the 724 difference of the juridical effects that a variation can provide with 725 respect to the involved actors (citizens, parties, institutions). In 726 this scenario the main characteristic of the expression of an act is 727 represented by its validity over the time, during which it provides 728 the same juridical effects. These effects change for amendments or 729 annulments of other legislative or jurisprudential acts. Therefore 730 notes, summarizations, comments, anonymizations and other editorial 731 activities over the same text do not produce different expressions, 732 but different manifestations. 734 4.3 The Structure of the Local Name 736 The within the "lex" namespace MUST contain all the 737 necessary pieces of information enabling the unequivocal 738 identification of a legal document. 739 In the legal domain, at the "work" level, they are essentially four: 740 the enacting authority, the type of measure, the details and the 741 annex, if any. 742 It is often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is: 743 - the original version and all the amended versions of the same 744 document; 745 - the versions of the text expressed in the different official 746 languages of the state or organization. 747 Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse 748 manifestations, which may be produced in multiple locations using 749 different means and formats. 750 In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work) 751 remains the same, but information is added regarding the specific 752 version under consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added 753 to the expression for representing the characteristics of the 754 publication (manifestation). 755 The information which forms a source of law uniform name at each 756 level (work, expression, manifestation) is expressed in the official 757 language of the related jurisdiction; in case of more official 758 languages (as in Switzerland) or more involved jurisdictions (as in 759 international treaties), more language-dependent names (aliases) are 760 created. 762 Therefore, the more general structure of the national name appears as 763 follows: 765 ::=["@"]?["$"]? 767 However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of 768 the main original provision (work) becomes the identifier of an 769 entire class of documents which includes: the original main document, 770 the annexes, and all their versions, languages and formats 771 subsequently generated. 773 4.4 Structure of the Document Identifier at Work Level 775 The structure of the document identifier is made of the four 776 fundamental elements mentioned above, clearly distinguished one from 777 the other in accordance with an order identifying increasingly narrow 778 domains and competences: 780 ::=":"":"
[":"]* 782 where: 784 is the issuing or proposing authority of the measure 785 (e.g., State, Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.); 787 is the type of the measure, both public nature (e.g., 788 constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) as 789 well as private one (e.g., license, agreement, etc); 791
are the terms associated to the measure, typically the date 792 (usually the signature date) and the number included in the heading 793 of the act; 795 is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1). 797 In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their 798 own uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the 799 identifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document. 800 In similar way the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending 801 to that of the annex which it is attached to. 803 The main elements of the national name are generally divided into 804 several elementary components, and, for each, specific rules of 805 representation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and 806 order). 807 For the details regarding each element, please see the Attachment B. 809 Examples of identifiers are: 811 urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22 812 urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45 813 urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963 814 urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68 815 urn:lex:fr:assemblee.nationale:proposition.loi:13.legislature;1762 816 urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1 817 urn:lex:fsf.org:free.software.foundation:general.public.license:2007- 818 06-29;lex-1 819 urn:lex:nl:hoge.raad:besluit:2008-04-01;bc8581 821 It is worth to note that the type of measure is important to identify 822 case law, as well as legislation, especially within the legal systems 823 where cases, by tradition, are identified only through the year of 824 release and a number. Since the aim of the "urn:lex" schema is to 825 identify specific materials, the type of measure or the full date are 826 able to provide discrimination between materials belonging to a 827 specific case. 829 Here below is an example where the type of measure or the full date 830 are essential for identify specific materials of a case: 831 - 4/59 Judgment of the EEC Court of Justice 04/04/1960, Mannesmann AG 832 and others / ECSC High Authority 833 urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:judgment:1960-04-04;4-59 834 - 4/59 Order of the EEC Court of Justice 18/05/1960, Mannesmann AG 835 and others / ECSC High Authority 836 urn:lex:eec.lex:court.justice:order:1960-05-18;4-59 838 4.5 Aliases 840 International treaties involve more jurisdictions (the signing ones) 841 so they are represented through more identifiers, each of them 842 related to an involved jurisdiction. For example, a bilateral France 843 and Germany treaty is identified through two URNs (aliases) belonging 844 to either "fr" or "de" jurisdiction 845 (e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and 846 "urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:...") 847 since it pertains to both the French and the German jurisdiction. 849 In the states or organisations that have more than one official 850 language, a document has more identifiers, each of them expressed in 851 a different official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases. 852 This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniform 853 name of the referred source of law in the same language used in the 854 document itself. 855 (e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31", 856 "urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.) 858 Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in 859 order to facilitate its linking to other documents. This option can 860 be used for documents that, although unique, are commonly referenced 861 from different perspectives. For example, the form of a document's 862 promulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation promulgated 863 through a Decree of the President of the Republic). 865 4.6 Structure of the Document Identifier at Expression Level 867 There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to 868 specific versions or languages. 869 Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that 870 text is to be considered as the valid text (in force or effective). 871 The lifetime of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent 872 version. 873 New versions of a text may be brought into existence by: 875 - changes in the text (amendments) due to the issuing of other legal 876 acts and to the subsequent production of updated or consolidated 877 texts; 878 - correction of publication errors (rectification or errata corrige); 879 - entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on 880 the specific date in which different partitions of a text come into 881 force. 882 Each of such versions may be expressed in more than one language, 883 with each language-version having its own specific identifier. 884 The identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to 885 the work identifier, using the following main structure: 887 ::=[":"]? 889 where: 891 is the identifier of the version of the (original or 892 amended) source of law. In general it is expressed by the 893 promulgation date of the amending act; anyway other specific 894 information can be used for particular documents. If necessary, the 895 original version is specified by the string "original" (for the 896 details regarding this element, please see the Attachment C); 898 is the identification code of the language in which the 899 document is expressed, according to [BCP47] (it=Italian, fr=French, 900 de=German, etc.). The granularity level of the language (for example 901 the specification of the German language as used in Switzerland 902 rather than the standard German) is left to each specific 903 jurisdiction. The information is not necessary when the text is 904 expressed in the unique official language of the country or 905 jurisdiction. 907 Examples of document identifiers for expressions are: 909 urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr (original version in 910 French) 911 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de (original version 912 in German) 913 urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr (amended version in 914 French) 915 urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de (amended version 916 in German) 917 urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273@originel:fr 918 (original version in French of a Belgian decision) 920 4.7 Structure of the Document Identifier at Manifestation Level 922 To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the 923 expression is followed by a suitable suffix describing the: 924 - digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed according to 925 the MIME Content-Type standard [RFC2045], where the "/" character 926 is to be substituted by the "-" sign; 927 - editorial staff who produced it, expressed according to its 928 Internet domain name; 929 - possible components of the expressions contained in the 930 manifestation. Such components are expressed by language-dependent 931 labels representing the whole document (in English "all") or the 932 main part of the document (in English "body") or the caption label 933 of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2, etc.); 934 - other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision text). 936 The suffix will thus read: 938 ::=[";""]* 939 ":"[";"]* 940 [":"[";"]*]? 941 [":"[";"]*]? 943 To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each main element of 944 the manifestation MAY be followed by further specifications, for 945 example as regards the version, for the archive 946 name and the electronic publisher, etc. 948 (examples: 949 the original version the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might have 950 the following manifestations with their relative uniform names: 951 - PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Italian 952 Parliament: 953 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application- 954 pdf;1.7:parlamento.it" 955 - XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF 956 format (version 1.7) of the "Figura 1" (figure 1) contained in the 957 body, edited by the Italian Senate: 958 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir- 959 2.2:senato.it:testo" 960 "urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application- 961 pdf;1.7:senato.it:figura.1" 963 the Spanish URN of the html format of the whole Judgement of the 964 European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 11/06/2009, in Spanish version, 965 published in the Jurifast data base in anonymized form: 966 "urn:lex:eu:tibunal.justicia:sentencia:2009-06-11;33- 967 08@original:es$text-html:juradmin.eu;jurifast:todo:anonimo") 969 Furthermore, it is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a 970 manifestation (or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are 971 involved. These may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in 972 their own right (e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts 973 recorded in non-textual formats, such as image scans of documents. 975 In these ways, a LEX name permits: 976 - exploitation of all the advantages of an unequivocal identifier 977 that is independent of physical location; 978 - a means to provide choice among different existing manifestations 979 (e.g. XML or PDF formats, resolution degree of an image etc.) of 980 the same expression. 982 4.8 Sources of Law References 984 References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of 985 the act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document. 986 An act partition is a logical subdivision of the text, that, in a 987 structured format (as XML) fitting the document logical structure, is 988 represented by an element with its own ID; this ID aims to identify 989 the element and to locate it. In a mark-up that does not fit the 990 logical structure of the text (as HTML), generally only the starting 991 point of the partition, and not the element, is identified through a 992 label (a tag). 993 Therefore, for allowing browsers to point to a specific partition, it 994 is necessary that such partition is endowed with an unequivocal label 995 or ID within the including document and its value is the same 996 independently from the document format. 998 For enabling the construction of the partition identifier between 999 different collections of documents, specific construction rules for 1000 IDs or labels SHOULD be defined and shared, within each country or 1001 jurisdiction, for any document type (e.g., for legislation, the 1002 paragraph 2 of the article 3 might have as label or ID the value 1003 "art3;par2", similarly for case-law, paragraph 22 of the judgment in 1004 Case 46/76 Bauhuis v Netherlands, might have as label or ID the value 1005 "par22"). 1006 Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility with 1007 applications able to manage this information (e.g., returning the 1008 proper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the case 1009 of rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc. 1010 For this purpose it is necessary that the partition identifier is 1011 transmitted to the servers (resolution and application) and therefore 1012 it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment, 1013 which is not transmitted to the server. 1015 According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is: 1017 ::= ["~" ]? 1019 (e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French 1020 Act of 15 may 2004, n. 106, the reference is written 1021 "urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15;par3"). 1023 Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the 1024 partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to 1025 the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for 1026 example, out of a database), if it is possible, only the referred 1027 partition, otherwise to return the whole act. 1028 Anyway, to make it effective pointing to the indicated partition 1029 through a browser, the resolver SHOULD transform the partition ID of 1030 each returned URL in a URI fragment; this is obtained appending to 1031 URL the "#" character followed by the partition ID (in the example 1032 above, the returned URL will be #art15;par3). 1034 Anyway it is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in this 1035 case only the URN document component of the reference is transmitted 1036 to the resolver, therefore the whole document will be always 1037 retrieved. 1039 5 The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment 1041 5.1 Specifying the element of the LEX identifier 1043 Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization 1044 is assigned with a jurisdiction code, which characterizes the URNs of 1045 the source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code is 1046 assigned according to the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 (as well as TLDN or DN for 1047 the organizations) representation and it is the value of the 1048 element, which preserves cross-country uniqueness 1049 of the identifiers. 1051 5.2 Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment 1053 Any country or jurisdiction, who intends to adopt this schema, 1054 identifies a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which shares 1055 and defines the structure of the optional part () 1056 of the name, according to the organization of the state or 1057 institution. For example, in a federal state a 1058 corresponding to the name of each member state (e.g. "br;sao.paolo", 1059 "br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined. 1061 The process of assigning the will be managed by each 1062 specific country or jurisdiction under the related 1063 element. 1064 In any country the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the 1065 assignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of 1066 legal measure) of the local names considering the characteristics of 1067 its own state or institution organization. 1068 Such a Registrar MUST establish, according to the guidelines 1069 indicated in the current document, a uniform procedure within the 1070 country or organization to define elements, to take 1071 decisions upon normalizations and finally to solve and avoid possible 1072 name collisions as well as to maintain authoritative registries of 1073 various kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). In 1074 particular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structure 1075 and naming of government entities are important to semantically-aware 1076 applications in this domain. 1077 Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct 1078 partition IDs for each document type. 1079 Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the 1080 guidelines for the construction as well as the 1081 predefined values and codes. 1083 5.3 Identifier Uniqueness 1085 Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a 1086 element assigned to the sources of law of a specific 1087 country or organization, and a assigned by the issuing 1088 authority. The main elements (authority and type of measure) of the 1089 are defined by the Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it 1090 is ensured that the constructed URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional 1091 Registrar SHOULD provide clear documentation of rules by which names 1092 are to be constructed, and SHOULD update and make accessible its 1093 registries. 1095 Any issuing authority is responsible to define formal parameters to 1096 guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a 1097 conventional internal number, which, combined with the other components (authority, measure and date), builds an unequivocal 1099 identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue 1100 of previously assigned names. 1102 5.4 Identifier persistence considerations 1104 The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the 1105 institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the LEX 1106 schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all resources 1107 identified by the assigned URNs. 1109 In particular, ITTIG-CNR, as proposer, is responsible of maintaining 1110 the uniqueness of the element; given that the 1111 is assigned on the basis of the long-held ISO 3166 1112 Alpha-2 representation of the country (or the TLD name of the 1113 organization) and that the country or organization associated code is 1114 expected to continue indefinitely, the URN also persists 1115 indefinitely. 1117 The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate 1118 the responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which 1119 is identified within each country or organization. 1121 Therefore, each authority is responsible for assigning URNs which 1122 have a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique 1123 for the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations, 1124 as well as diverse local forms of government organization, will 1125 result in different methods of assigning responsibility for different 1126 levels of the name. 1127 Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an 1128 authoritative hierarchy, it can and SHOULD be done by creating 1129 consensus around a series of published rules for the creation and 1130 administration of names by institutions and bodies that operate by 1131 means of collaboration rather than compulsion. 1133 Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging 1134 from the national down to the very local, MUST equally take 1135 responsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their 1136 scope. 1138 6 Principles of the Resolution Service 1140 6.1 The General Architecture of the System 1142 The task of the resolution service is that of associating a LEX 1143 identifier with a specific document address on the network. By 1144 contrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and 1145 enforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" namespace 1146 resolver will be expected to cope with a wide variety of "dirty" 1147 inputs, particularly those created by the automated extraction of 1148 references from incomplete or inaccurate texts. In this document, 1149 the result is a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolver 1150 design. 1152 The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental 1153 components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a 1154 series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent 1155 within a specific domain of the namespace. 1156 Through the NAPTR records of the DNS (described in [RFC3403]), the 1157 client identifies the characteristics (protocol, port, site) of the 1158 service (e.g. according to [RFC2169]) capable of associating the 1159 relative URLs with the URN in question, thereby allowing access to 1160 the document. 1162 A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of 1163 hierarchically-dependent portions of the name. 1164 Delegation of this responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld 1165 provided that the processes for their resolution and management are 1166 robust and are followed. 1168 For the "lex" namespace, ITTIG-CNR will maintain the root zone 1169 "lex.urn.arpa" and, in correspondence with the adhesion of a new 1170 country (e.g., "br") or organization, will update the DNS information 1171 with a new record to delegate the relative resolution. This may be 1172 obtained by a regular expression that matches the initial part of the 1173 URN (e.g., "urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g., 1174 "lex.senado.gov.br"). 1176 Likewise the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniform 1177 names (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root 1178 in the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the 1179 resolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform 1180 names. In similar way it can delegate the resolution of 1181 country/organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo") 1182 towards the relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br"). 1184 Such DNS routing chain does not work for all the URN components 1185 containing %-encoded characters. Therefore in these cases a proper 1186 software implementing routing service has to be developed. 1188 The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base 1189 (consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a 1190 software to query the knowledge base itself. 1192 6.2 Catalogues for Resolution 1194 Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations, 1195 and incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document 1196 are thus likely to be built from textual references (this is even 1197 more frequent if they are created automatically through a specific 1198 parser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based on 1199 a relational-database, is suggested, as it will lead to a more higher 1200 flexibility in the resolution process. 1201 In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various 1202 versions and languages of the same source of law as well as the 1203 related manifestations. 1205 It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own 1206 catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each 1207 resource. 1209 6.3 Suggested resolver behaviour 1210 First of all the resolver should separate the part corresponding to 1211 the partition ID, through the "~" separator, from the document name. 1213 So, the resolution process SHOULD implement a normalization of the 1214 uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some 1215 components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms, 1216 expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names, 1217 standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function 1218 authorities and types of measure registers are useful. 1220 The resolver SHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URN 1221 which corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary). 1222 Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or 1223 incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial 1224 matches) is indicated. It is worth remarking that incomplete 1225 references (not including all the elements to create the canonical 1226 uniform name) are normal and natural; for a human reader, the 1227 reference would be "completed" by contextual understanding of the 1228 reference in the document in which it occurs. 1230 In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID information 1231 to retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition, 1232 otherwise to return of the entire document. 1234 Lacking more specific indications, the resolver SHOULD select the 1235 best (most recent) version of the requested source of law, and 1236 provide all the manifestations with their related items. 1237 A more specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will, 1238 of course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any 1239 suggested expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date, 1240 language, format, etc.). 1242 Finally, the resolver SHOULD append to URLs the "#" character 1243 followed by partition ID, transforming it in a URI fragment for 1244 browser pointing. 1246 7 Considerations 1248 7.1 Conformance with URN Syntax 1250 No special considerations. 1252 7.2 Validation mechanism 1254 The national Authority (or those it delegates) of each adhering 1255 country or organization is responsible of the definition or 1256 acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authority 1257 and type of legal measure). 1259 7.3 Scope 1261 Global interest. 1263 7.4 Namespace Considerations 1265 In collaboration with the legislative XML community, registrants 1266 carried out a preliminary study of the URI alternatives to satisfy 1267 the key requirements. 1268 The options analysed were: a private URI scheme, URL, PURL and URN. 1269 URN was considered the most appropriate URI given the requirements 1270 analysis. 1271 Advantages we would emphasize are: 1272 - greater flexibility in building the identifier; 1273 - the capacity to represent name components that are not strictly 1274 hierarchical; 1275 - the potential for clear division of the identifier into macro 1276 parts, main elements and components, using different separators; 1277 - ease of managing optional parts of a name. 1279 7.5 Community Considerations 1281 The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of 1282 information systems used in the Public Administration at the national 1283 and international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the 1284 legal information towards a federated architecture. In such an 1285 architecture, documents are directly managed by the issuing 1286 authorities, with resulting benefits in information authenticity, 1287 quality and currency. A shared identification mechanism resources 1288 guarantees that a distributed system will be as efficient and 1289 effective as a comparable centralized system. 1291 Creators of Internet content that references legal materials - 1292 including publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of 1293 legal publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace 1294 because facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by manual 1295 or automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining documents 1296 that contain such references. 1298 Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will 1299 be entitled to access the namespace and its associated application, 1300 registers, and resolution services, to facilitate document access. 1302 7.6 IANA Considerations 1304 This document includes a URN NID registration for "lex" for entry in 1305 the IANA registry of URN NIDs (see [RFC5226]), as well as the 1306 registration of the following NAPTRs record: 1308 in the URN.ARPA domain: 1309 lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" lex.ittig.cnr.it. 1311 in the URN.URI.ARPA domain: 1312 lex IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "" lex.ittig.cnr.it. 1314 7.7 Security Considerations 1316 This document introduces no additional security considerations beyond 1317 those associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general. 1319 8 References 1321 8.1 Normative References 1323 [BCP47] A. Phillips, M. Davis, "Tags for Identifying Languages", 1324 BCP 47, RFC 5646, September 2009 1326 [STD63] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 1327 10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003. 1329 [RFC2045] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail 1330 Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message 1331 Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. 1333 [RFC2119] S. Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 1334 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 1336 [RFC2141] R. Moats, K. R. Sollins, "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1337 1997. 1339 [RFC2169] R. Daniel, "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN", 1340 RFC 2169, June 1997 1342 [RFC3403] M. Mealling, Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS), 1343 Part Three: The Domain Name System (DNS) Database, RFC 1344 3403, October 2002. 1346 [RFC3406] D Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. 1347 Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace 1348 Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002. 1350 [RFC3492] A. Costello, "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode 1351 for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications 1352 (IDNA)", RFC 3492, March 2003 1354 [RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform 1355 Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 1356 3986, January 2005. 1358 [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an 1359 IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, 1360 May 2008 1362 [ISO3166] ISO 3166, "Country name codes", ISO 3166-1:1997. 1364 [ISO8601] ISO 8601, "Data elements and interchange formats", ISO 1365 8601:2004 1367 8.2 Informative References 1369 [SPIN] P.L. Spinosa, "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian 1370 Legal Documents", May, 2006 1371 http://www.nir.it/sito_area3- 1372 ap_stan_assegnazione_nomi.htm 1374 [FRAN] E. Francesconi, "Technologies for European Integration. 1375 Standards-based Interoperability of Legal Information 1376 Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-3, European Press Academic 1377 Publishing, 2007. 1379 9 Acknowledgments 1381 The authors of this document wish to thank all the supporters for 1382 giving suggestions and comments. 1383 They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community for the 1384 interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group 1385 "Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian 1386 NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [SPIN]. 1387 The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the 1388 Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for 1389 his contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful 1390 discussions which greatly improved the final draft. The authors wish 1391 to specially thank Marc van Opijnen (Dutch Ministry of Security and 1392 Justice) for his valuable comments on LEX specifications which 1393 contributed to improve the final result, as well as for the common 1394 work aimed to harmonize ECLI and LEX standards. Thanks also to Joao 1395 Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system analyst of the Brazilian 1396 Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, information management 1397 consultant, for their detailed comments on the first drafts of this 1398 document, which provided significant hints to the final version of 1399 the standard, and to Robert Richards of the Legal Information 1400 Institute (Cornell University Law School), promoter and maintainer of 1401 the Legal Informatics Research social network, as well as to the 1402 members of this network, for their valuable comments on this 1403 proposal. 1405 Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly 1406 contributed to the first drafting of this document. 1408 10 Author's Addresses 1410 PierLuigi Spinosa 1411 Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) 1412 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) 1413 Via de' Barucci, 20 1414 50127 Firenze 1415 Italy 1416 Telephone: +39 055 43995 1417 e-mail: pierluigi.spinosa@ittig.cnr.it 1419 Enrico Francesconi 1420 Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell'Informazione Giuridica (ITTIG) 1421 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) 1422 Via de' Barucci, 20 1423 50127 Firenze 1424 Italy 1425 Telephone: +39 055 43995 1426 e-mail: enrico.francesconi@ittig.cnr.it 1428 Caterina Lupo 1429 (ICT consultant) 1430 Via San Fabiano, 25 1431 00165 Roma 1432 Telephone: +39 3382632348 1433 e-mail: caterina.lupo@gmail.com 1435 Attachment A -- Summary of the syntax of the uniform names of the "lex" 1436 namespace 1438 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1439 * General Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) 1440 * NID = namespace 1441 * NSS = specific name 1442 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1443 ::= "urn:"":" 1445 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1446 * Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) of the "lex" namespace 1447 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1448 ::= "lex" 1450 ::= "urn:lex:" 1452 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1453 * Structure of a "lex" specific name 1454 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1455 ::= ":" 1457 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1458 * Structure of the element 1459 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1460 ::= [";"]* 1462 ::= {2,4} | ([]*) 1464 ::= []* 1466 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1467 * Structure of the element 1468 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1469 ::= ["@"]?["$"]? 1471 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1472 * Structure of the element 1473 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1474 ::= ":"":"
[":"]* 1476 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1477 * Structure of the element 1478 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1479 ::= ["+"]* 1481 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1482 ::= []* 1484 ::= []* 1486 ::= []* 1488 ::= []* 1490 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1491 * Structure of the element 1492 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1493 ::= [";"]* 1495 ::= []* 1497 ::= []* 1499 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1500 * Structure of the
element 1501 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1502
::= (|)";" 1504 ::= [","]* 1506 ::= []* 1508 ::= ([","]*)| 1510 ::= [|]* 1512 ::= "lex-"+ 1514 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1515 * Structure of the element 1516 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1517 ::= [";"]* 1519 ::= []* 1521 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1522 * Structure of the element 1523 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1525 ::= [":"]? 1527 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1528 * Structure of the element 1529 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1530 ::= (|) 1531 [";"(|)]* 1533 ::= 1535 ::= 1537 ::= []* 1539 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1540 * Structure of the element 1541 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1543 ::= {2,3} 1545 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1546 * Structure of the element 1547 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1548 ::= [";""]* 1549 ":"[";""]* 1550 [":"[";"]*]? 1551 [":"[";"]*]? 1553 ::= [|"-"]* 1555 ::= [|"-"]* 1557 ::= [|"-"]* 1559 ::= [|"-"]* 1561 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1562 * Structure of the date 1563 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1564 ::= "-""-" 1566 ::= {4} 1567 ::= {2} 1568 ::= {2} 1570 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1571 * Allowed characters 1572 *------------------------------------------------------------------- 1573 ::= | | | 1575 ::= | "." 1577 ::= | | 1578 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" | 1579 "i" | "j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" | 1580 "q" | "r" | "s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" | 1581 "y" | "z" 1583 ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | 1584 "8" | "9" 1586 ::= ("%" ( | )){1,6} 1588 ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" 1590 ::= "-" | "_" | "'" | "=" | "(" | ")" 1592 ::= ":" | "@" | "$" | "+" | ";" | "," | "~" 1594 ::= "*" | "!" 1596 Attachment B -- Specific Syntax of the Identifier at Work Level 1598 B1 The element 1600 B1.1 Indication of the Authority 1602 The element of a uniform name may indicate, in the 1603 various cases: 1604 - the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More 1605 specifically, the authority adopting the provision or enacting it; 1606 - the institution where the provision is registered, known and 1607 referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills 1608 identified through the reference to the Chamber where they are 1609 presented); 1610 - the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the 1611 legal provision even when this is issued by another authority 1612 (e.g., the statute of a Body); 1613 - the entity that proposed the legal material not yet included in the 1614 institutional process (e.g. a proposed bill written by a a 1615 political party). 1617 B1.2 Multiple Issuers 1619 Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g., 1620 inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the 1621 element contains all the issuing parties (properly 1622 separated), as follows: 1624 ::= ["+"]* 1626 (e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances") 1628 B1.3 Indication of the Issuer 1630 Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an 1631 institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g., 1632 Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance 1633 with the institution's hierarchical structure, from the more general 1634 to more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the 1635 relative office (President, Director, etc.). 1636 Therefore, the structure of the issuer is as follows: 1638 ::= ([";"]*[";"]*) | 1640 (e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager") 1642 B1.4 Indication of the Body 1643 Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing 1644 authority is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional 1645 Acts) and normally it is not indicated in the references. 1646 Just like in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is 1647 limited to the minimum in relation to the type of measure. 1648 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act") 1650 B1.5 Indication of the Function 1652 Generally, the component is indicated, sometimes instead 1653 of the body itself: 1654 - in case of political, representative or elective offices 1655 (e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of 1656 "university.oxford;rectorship:decree"); 1657 - when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general 1658 manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to 1659 associate a specific internal institutional structure to 1660 (e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager"). 1662 It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in 1663 charge of an institution (typically, a general director); in this 1664 case, only the structure and not the person in charge is indicated 1665 (e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration"). 1667 The function MUST be indicated when: 1668 - it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the 1669 structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy 1670 director, etc.); 1671 - the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the 1672 indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity. 1674 B1.6 Conventions for the Authority 1676 Acts and measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or 1677 enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally 1678 indicated "state" (expressed in each country official language) as 1679 authority; the same convention is used for constitutions, codes 1680 (civil, criminal, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc) and 1681 international treaties. 1683 B2 The element 1685 B2.1 Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure 1687 In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory. 1688 This makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the 1689 measure (e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even 1690 if it is widely used. 1692 When the authority-measure combination clearly identifies a specific 1693 document, the type of measure is not defined through attributes 1694 referring to the enacting authority. 1695 (e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act") 1697 B2.2 Further Specification to the Type of Measure 1699 In the element, it is usually sufficient to indicate the 1700 type of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather 1701 than through the formal details (date and number), may be made 1702 through some of their characteristics such as the subject-matter 1703 covered (e.g., accounting regulations), nicknames referring to the 1704 promoter (e.g., Bassanini Act) or to the topic of the act (e.g., 1705 Bankruptcy Law), etc.. 1706 In these cases, the type of measure MAY be followed by further 1707 specifications useful in referencing even if the details are lacking: 1709 ::=[";"]* 1711 (e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy") 1713 B2.3 Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References 1715 There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually 1716 cited in different ways, for example through the legislative act 1717 introducing them into the legal order (President's decree, 1718 legislative decree, etc.) or through their legislative category 1719 (regulations, consolidation, etc.). 1720 In order to ensure, in all the cases, the validity of the references, 1721 an alias that takes into account the measure category is associated 1722 to the uniform name, representing the legislative form. 1723 (e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and 1724 "state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358"). 1726 B2.4 Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases 1728 The sources of law including different normative references are 1729 usually introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing 1730 of an act, which they are either included or attached to. It is, 1731 therefore, necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of 1732 the same document. Specifically, the different measures can be: 1733 - adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by 1734 the provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the 1735 correlation is established between two uniform names each featuring 1736 a completely different element 1737 (e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and 1738 "ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic. 1739 planning:decree"); 1741 - issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing 1742 authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers to 1743 the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two aliases 1744 share the first part of the authority; 1745 (e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and 1746 "municipality.firenze;council:deliberation"); 1747 - issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own 1748 competence; in this case the element is the same 1749 (e.g., "ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools. 1750 telematic.process" and "ministry.justice:decree"). 1752 B3 The
element 1754 B3.1 Indication of the Details 1756 The details of a source of law usually include the date of the 1757 enactment and the identification number (inclusion in the body of 1758 laws, register, protocol, etc.). 1759 Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which 1760 the number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a 1761 measure has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these 1762 reasons, the set up of both elements (date and number) includes 1763 multiple values. 1765 Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents 1766 through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number) 1767 rather than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and 1768 never used in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV 1769 legislature). In these cases, the component is used in 1770 substitution of the component . 1772 Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific 1773 sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform 1774 name, which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date- 1775 number has the following form: 1777
::=(|)";" 1779 (e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislature;s.2544") 1781 B3.2 Multiple Dates 1783 Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one 1784 date; in this case, in the field all the given dates are to 1785 be reported and indicated as follows: 1787 ::=[","]* 1789 (e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30, 1790 1999- January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name: 1791 "personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13; 1792 1-p-2000"). 1794 B3.3 Unnumbered Measures 1796 Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non- 1797 unequivolcal identifier, because several measures of the same type 1798 can exist, issued on the same day by the same authority. 1799 To ensure that the uniform name is unambiguous, the field 1800 MUST, in any case, contain a discriminating element, which can be any 1801 identifier used internally, and not published, by the authority 1802 (e.g., protocol). 1803 If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier 1804 MUST be created for the name system. In order to easily differentiate 1805 it, such number is preceded by the string "lex-": 1807 ::="lex-"[]+ 1809 (e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3") 1811 It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a 1812 discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities, 1813 only one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to 1814 the document (e.g., the proponent). 1815 The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g., 1816 the Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are 1817 recognized by the univocal identifying label printed on the paper. 1818 Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in 1819 an official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear 1820 advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found. 1822 B3.4 Multiple Numbers 1824 Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by 1825 a set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills). 1826 In this case, in the field, all the identifiers are 1827 reported, according to the following structure: 1829 ::=[","]* 1831 (e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97") 1832 The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g., 1833 ":"), including the comma, cannot exist inside the , and 1834 therefore MUST be turned into "-". 1835 This conversion may imply that the uniform name of the document is no 1836 more unique (e.g., removal 123-BIS and return 123/BIS of the bill 123 1837 both are identified as "123-bis"); in this case, it is necessary to 1838 add a specific distinctive ending (e.g., "123-bis-removal" and "123- 1839 bis-return"). 1841 B4 The element 1843 B4.1 Formal Annexes 1845 Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may 1846 be referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to 1847 which they are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the 1848 main document as well as each formal individual annex is univocally 1849 identified. 1851 Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a 1852 legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In any 1853 case, they MUST be given a uniform name, which includes the uniform 1854 name of the source of law to which they are attached, and a suffix 1855 which identifies the annex itself. 1857 The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the 1858 annex and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which 1859 will facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is 1860 missing: 1862 ::=[";"]* 1864 (e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1865 borders.park") 1867 The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved 1868 (e.g. ":") must not be featured in the and therefore MUST 1869 be turned into ".". 1871 B4.2 Annexes of Annexes 1873 When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers 1874 are created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those 1875 of the annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it). 1877 (e.g., Table 1 attached to Attachment A of the preceding legal act 1878 has the following uniform name: 1879 "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a; 1880 borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories"). 1882 Attachment C -- Specific Syntax of the Element of the 1883 Expression 1885 C1 The element 1887 C1.1 Different Versions of a Legislative Document 1889 The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the 1890 following forms: 1891 - "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the modified 1892 parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts) and their 1893 related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside one single 1894 object (e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be able, in a 1895 dynamic way, to appear in different forms according to the 1896 requested date of effectiveness; 1897 - "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object 1898 is created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each 1899 object is, therefore, characterized by its own period of validity. 1900 In any case all the versions SHOULD be linked one another and 1901 immediately navigable. 1903 C1.2 Identification of the Version 1905 In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to 1906 the uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific 1907 suffix. 1908 Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and 1909 includes, first and foremost, one of the following elements: 1910 - the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account; 1911 - the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the 1912 errata corrige, is published; 1913 - a specification which must identify the reason concerning the 1914 amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process), 1915 for the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills). 1917 Anyway it is possible to add further specifications that will 1918 distinguish each of the different versions of the text to guarantee 1919 identifier unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the 1920 in-force or effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text 1921 itself (e.g., when the amendments introduced by an act are applied at 1922 different times) or different events occurring in the same date. 1924 ::=(|) 1925 [";"(|)]* 1927 where: 1928 - contains the issuing date of the last considered 1929 amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the 1930 original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is 1931 effective and the information system produces one version for each 1932 of them, such element contains the string "original"; 1933 - any information useful to identify unambiguously 1934 and univocally the version; 1935 - contains the date in which a version is put into 1936 force, is effective or is published; 1937 - is a name assigned to the event producing a further version 1938 (e.g., amendment, decision, etc.). 1940 The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a 1941 version because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data). 1943 (e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19" 1944 identifies the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No. 1945 12" with the amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998, 1946 No. 51", without any indication of its actual entry into force. The 1947 same uniform name with the additional ending ";1999-01-01" indicates 1948 the in-force or effective version starting in a different date (from 1949 1/1/99). 1951 For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the 1952 effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a 1953 new uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the 1954 identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case 1955 of a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate 1956 every uniform name with the period of time during which such a name 1957 together with its corresponding text is to be considered valid. 1959 (e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941, 1960 no. 12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of 1961 02/19/1998, no. 51", contains the name of the original 1962 "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12" as well as the name of the updated 1963 version "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19"). 1965 Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a 1966 new version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the 1967 creation of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order 1968 to guarantee their alignment (i.e., the main document, the 1969 attachments and annexes). 1971 Attachment D -- Http-based LEX identifier 1973 D1 Http-based URI 1975 Http-based URIs have been recently promoted as stable and location- 1976 independent identifiers [RFC3986]. According to this syntax, at all 1977 levels, resource IDs belong to the http scheme and are normally 1978 resolved using mechanisms widely available in browsers and web 1979 servers. 1981 Such kind of identifiers have been recently suggested also within the 1982 set of principles and technologies, known as "Linked Data" as a basic 1983 infrastructure of the semantic web to enable data sharing and reuse 1984 on a massive scale. 1986 Such principles, introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in his Web 1987 architecture note "Linked Data" 1988 (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html), are synthetically: 1990 - Use URIs as names for things; 1991 - Use HTTP URIs, so that people can look up those names; 1992 - When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the 1993 standards (RDF, SPARQL); 1994 - Include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more 1995 things. 1997 The second principle is the one more affecting a discussion about the 1998 scheme to be used for legal resources identification; in particular 1999 to the aim of guaranteeing the access to the resources, http-based 2000 identifiers are suggested. This property is addressed as 2001 "dereferenceability", meaning a resource retrieval mechanism using 2002 any of the Internet protocols, e.g. HTTP, so that HTTP clients, for 2003 instance, can look up the URI using the HTTP protocol and retrieve a 2004 description of the resource that is identified by the URI. 2005 Such property is available for http-based identifiers either with or 2006 without a resolver allowing a 1-to-1 association with the "best copy" 2007 of the resource; in the legal domain it is related to the unique act 2008 manifestation of a specific publisher and format. 2010 The same property holds for URN identifiers, as long as a resolver is 2011 properly set-up, allowing 1-to-N association with more manifestations 2012 of a resource (act). 2014 Therefore an http-based identifier, stable and independent from the 2015 resource location, can be effectively used when a single publisher 2016 provides a specific item of this resource (1-to-1 mapping between an 2017 identifier and manifestation of an act). The independence from the 2018 resource location is managed by a "303 Redirect" status code (see 2019 http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/#htoc11) which may require a 2020 resolver able to access the physical location of the resource (e.g., 2021 through submitting a query to a database). A URN identifier, stable 2022 and independent form the resource location, can be effectively used 2023 within a federative environment where different publishers can 2024 provide different items of the same act (1-to-N mapping between an 2025 identifier and different manifestations of an act). 2027 In order to comply with the Linked Data principles and to build http- 2028 based identifiers using the LEX namespace specifications, the LEX 2029 schema and metadata set can be serialized according to an http URI 2030 syntax. It is worthwhile to mention that URN focuses on identifying 2031 an act, while Linked Data principles focus on identifying a resource 2032 on the Web. 2034 In the following sections the http-based serialization of the urn LEX 2035 schema is reported. 2037 D2 The http-based LEX identifier structure 2039 The http-based hierarchical structure of the LEX identifier is the 2040 following: 2042 "http://""/lex/""/" 2044 where: 2045 - represents the name of the organization server 2046 publishing the resource; 2047 - "lex" is the equivalent of the URN namespace ID and provides the 2048 reference to the naming convention adopted; 2049 - and share meaning and syntax of the 2050 corresponding components in the LEX specifications. 2052 The element follows the syntax rules of the 2053 corresponding element in the URN specification, therefore it has the 2054 following structure: 2056 ::=[";"]* 2058 The character ";" still separates the identification code of the 2059 country or jurisdiction where the source of law is issued 2060 () from any possible administrative hierarchical 2061 sub-structures defined by each country or organisation according to 2062 its own legal system. 2064 The follows the FRBR model as implemented by the LEX 2065 specifications, therefore its http-based structure is the following: 2067 ::="/@/""/$/" 2069 D3 The http-based LEX identifier at Work Level 2071 According to the corresponding level of the URN version, the http- 2072 based LEX identifier structure at work level is the following: 2074 ::="/""/"
["/"]* 2076 The elements , and follow the same 2077 syntax rules of the corresponding elements in the URN specification. 2079 Examples of http-based identifiers at level, corresponding to 2080 the urn-based examples in Section 4.4, are the following: 2082 http:///lex/it/stato/legge/2006-05-14;22 2083 http:///lex/uk/ministry.justice/decree/1999-10-07;45 2084 http:///lex/ch;glarus/regiere/erlass/2007-10-15;963 2085 http:///lex/es/tribunal.supremo/decision/2001-09-28;68 2086 http:///lex/fr/assemblee.nationale/proposition.loi/ 2087 13.legislature;1762 2088 http:///lex/br/estado/constituicao/1988-10-05;lex-1 2089 http:///lex/fsf.org/free.software.foundation/ 2090 general.public.license/2007-06-29;lex-1 2091 http:///lex/nl/hoge.raad/besluit/2008-04-01;bc8581 2093 D4 The http-based LEX identifier at Expression Level 2095 According to the corresponding level of the URN version, the http- 2096 based LEX structure at expression level is the following: 2098 ::=["/"]? 2100 The elements and follow the same syntax rules of 2101 the corresponding elements in the URN specification. 2103 Examples of http-based identifiers at expression level, corresponding 2104 to the urn-based examples in Section 4.6, are the following: 2106 http:///lex/ch/etat/loi/2006-05-14;22/@/originel/fr 2107 (original version in French) 2108 http:///lex/ch/staat/gesetz/2006-05-14;22/@/original/de 2109 (original version in German) 2110 http:///lex/ch/etat/loi/2006-05-14;22/@/2008-03-12/fr 2111 (amended version in French) 2112 http:///lex/ch/staat/gesetz/2006-05-14;22/@/2008-03-12/de 2113 (amended version in German) 2114 http:///lex/be/conseil.etat/decision/2008-07-09;185.273 2115 /@/originel/fr 2116 (original version in French of a Belgian decision) 2118 D5 The http-based LEX identifier at Manifestation Level 2120 Information provided in the URN version at manifestation level is 2121 differently accommodated in the corresponding level of the http-based 2122 LEX identifier. 2124 The element, reported at manifestation level in the urn- 2125 based LEX version, is an information already contained in the of the http-based LEX identifier, therefore it is omitted in 2127 the elements. 2128 Similarly the element is omitted since it loses its meaning 2129 which would derived from the comparison between different 2130 manifestations. 2132 The element is reported as unique extension of the data 2133 format in which the manifestation is drafted. The value is compliant 2134 with the registered file extensions, thus it can be "pdf" for PDF, 2135 "doc" for MS Word, "xml" for XML documents, "tif" for tiff image 2136 format, etc. 2138 Therefore the http-based LEX structure at manifestation level is the 2139 following: 2141 ::=[[";"]*]"." 2143 The element follows the same syntax rules of the 2144 corresponding element in the URN specification. 2146 Examples of http-based identifiers at manifestation level, 2147 corresponding to the urn-based examples in Section 4.7 are the 2148 following: 2150 http://www.senato.it/lex/it/stato/legge/2000-04-03;56/$/testo.xml 2151 (body of the Italian law 3 April 2000, n. 56, published by the 2152 Italian Senate in xml format) 2153 http://www.senato.it/lex/it/stato/legge/2000-04-03;56/$/figura.1.pdf 2154 (Figure 1 in PDF format of the Italian law 3 April 2000, n. 56, 2155 published by the Italian Senate) 2156 http://www.juradmin.eu/jurifast/lex/eu/tibunal.justicia/sentencia/ 2157 2009-06-11;33-08/@/original/es/$/todo.html 2158 (the Spanish http-based LEX identifier of the html format of the 2159 whole Judgement of the European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 2160 11/06/2009, in Spanish version, published by the Juriadmin site in 2161 the Jurifast data base) 2162 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/lex/eu/commission/directive/ 2163 2010-03-09;2010-19-EU/$/body.xml 2164 (body of the EU Directive n. 2010-19-EU, dated 2010-03-09, in its 2165 XML format published by Eur-Lex)