OASIS LegalDocumentML (LegalDocML) TC

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Advancing worldwide best practices for the use of XML in legal documents

Fabio Vitali, fabio@cs.unibo.it, Chair
Monica Palmirani, monica.palmirani@unibo.it, Chair

Table of Contents

Announcements

Akoma Ntoso Version 1.0 has been accepted by the OASIS members as an OASIS Standard. See the public announcement for details.

Akoma Ntoso Version 1.0 and Akoma Ntoso Naming Convention Version 1.0 have been approved by the TC as OASIS Committee Specifications effective 06 June 2017. For details, see the public announcement and the list of Technical Work Produced by the TC below.

Funding to ensure the broadest possible international participation in LegalDocML has been provided to OASIS through a generous contribution from Microsoft.

Membership in the OASIS LegalDocML TC is open to all interested parties. Contact join@oasis-open.org for more information.

Overview

The OASIS LegalDocML TC works to advance worldwide best practices for the use of XML within a Parliaments', Assembly's or Congress' document management processes, within courts' and tribunals' judgment management systems, and generally in legal documents including contracts. The work is based on the Akoma Ntoso-UN project. The LegalDocML TC's goal is to collect requirements from the community of the stakeholders who create, manage and use legislative and legal documents (editors, libraries, public institutions, tribunals, publishers, etc.) in order to extend and refine the standard. All are welcome to join this work.

The LegalDocumentXML Specs provides a common legal document standard for the specification of parliamentary, legislative and judicial documents, for their interchange between institutions anywhere in the world and for the creation of a common data and metadata model that allows experience, expertise, and tools to be shared and extended by all participating peers, courts, Parliaments, Assemblies, Congresses and administrative branches of governments. The standard aims to provide a format for long-term storage of and access to parliamentary, legislative and judicial documents that allows search, interpretation and visualization of documents.

The specifications of the standard is based on the experience of the Akoma Ntoso language, and for this reason the specification keeps the name "Akoma Ntoso" and the root of the XML-schema will be "akomaNtoso".

The LegalDocumentXML Specs examine the relationships between the proposed XML vocabulary and other similar efforts especially those that already have gained national acceptance or are included in other LegalXML vocabularies (e.g. eContracts). In particular, the CEN Metalex standard is recognized as offering a conceptual meta-model that is appropriate for the management of the compliancy issues between different XML national standards. Akoma Ntoso is from the very beginning compliant with CEN Metalex as an explicit design choice. CEN Metalex compliancy will be considered as the first and most important requirement for comparison between the XML language approved by the TC and any other XML standard.

One of the topics about whom the LegalDocumentXML Specs provides a standardization is a URI-based syntax for legal citations for all types of documents produced by Parliaments and Courts and managed by the XML vocabulary, called the naming convention. The LegalDocumentXML Spec aims to examine and, as much as possible, accept past experiences and decisions of the Akoma Ntoso technical team, which have been consistently using an http-based syntax. This approach appears similar to the one chosen by the European Legislation Identifier and is also consistent with the http based URIs of the URN:LEX syntax, appendix D.

The TC is affiliated with the OASIS LegalXML Member Section. For more information on LegalDocML, see the TC Charter.

Subcommittees

No subcommittees have been formed for this TC.

Technical Work Produced by the Committee

OASIS TC Open Repositories Sponsored by the Committee

Content in OASIS TC Open Repositories is created by public contributions under an open source license as designated by the LegalDocML TC.

Expository Work Produced by the Committee

Akoma Ntoso Version 1.0 Committee Specification Draft 02 / Public Review Draft 02
- Akoma Ntoso Version 1.0 Part 1: XML Vocabulary HTML (Authoritative): http://docs.oasis-open.org/legaldocml/akn-core/v1.0/csprd02/part1-vocabulary/akn-core-v1.0-csprd02-part1-vocabulary.html
- Akoma Ntoso Version 1.0 Part 2: Specifications HTML and Editable Source (Authoritative): http://docs.oasis-open.org/legaldocml/akn-core/v1.0/csprd02/part2-specs/akn-core-v1.0-csprd02-part2-specs.html
- XML schemas: http://docs.oasis-open.org/legaldocml/akn-core/v1.0/csprd02/part2-specs/schemas/
- XML examples: http://docs.oasis-open.org/legaldocml/akn-core/v1.0/csprd02/part2-specs/examples/

Akoma Ntoso Naming Convention Version 1.0 Committee Specification Draft 02 / Public Review Draft 02 http://docs.oasis-open.org/legaldocml/akn-nc/v1.0/csprd02/akn-nc-v1.0-csprd02.html


External Resources

Mailing Lists and Comments

legaldocml: the list used by TC members to conduct Committee work. TC membership is required to post. TC members are automatically subscribed; the public may view archives.

legaldocml-comment: a public mail list for providing input to the OASIS LegalDocML TC members. Send a comment or view archives.

Additional Information

Providing Feedback: OASIS welcomes feedback on its technical activities from potential users, developers, and others to better assure the interoperability and quality of OASIS work.