Welcome to the pages of the Leibniz Center for Law of the University of Amsterdam. As an interdisciplinary research group, we develop intelligent technology to support legal practice both in the private and in the public sector. We apply Artificial Intelligence techniques to problems in legal theory, legal knowledge management and the field of Law in general. In this capacity, we participate in many (inter)national research initiatives and maintain strong ties to the international research community and government agencies.
We have longstanding experience in the development of legal ontologies, automatic legal reasoning and legal knowledge-based systems, (standard) languages for representing legal knowledge and information, user-friendly disclosure of legal data, and the application of information technology in education and legal practice. As an academic partner, the Leibniz Center provides advice on change-management issues of knowledge-intensive legal processes and the improvement of knowledge-productivity in legal organisations.
The Leibniz Center for Law has its roots in the former department of Computer Science & Law (est. 1989) of the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, and currently houses about 15 researchers.
For more background on the Leibniz Center, see our general information pages, and have a look at current projects.
During ICAIL 2013 a workshop on network analysis in law will be organized. For more information see this page.
March 26th, 2013
The 14th International Conference on AI and Law will be held in Rome, Italy, from 10-14 June.
For more information see the web site.
March 26th, 2013
Celebrating 25 years of supporting and enhancing cutting edge research in the interface between law and computer technology, the 2012 JURIX conference will return to its roots in Amsterdam, 17th-19th December 2012. The deadline for paper submission is September 1st, 2012.
Continue Reading July 9th, 2012
The Leibniz Center for Law of the University of Amsterdam has made all Dutch legislation available as CEN MetaLex and Linked Open Data through the MetaLex Document Server portal (MDS). “The XML source documents currently made available by the Dutch government are simply not good enough”, says Rinke Hoekstra, researcher at the Leibniz Center, and the Knowledge Representation group of the VU University Amsterdam.
The MetaLex Document Server improves over the XML API of the official portal by:
- Providing persistent, versioned identifiers of all elements of regulations.
- Maintaining source XML for all versions of legislation since May 2011, rather than only the latest version.
- All metadata is published as RDF Linked Data, is linked to the original legislative sources, and uses standard vocabularies such as the MetaLex Ontology, Dublin Core, Open Provenance Model Vocabulary, Simple Event Model, FOAF, etc.
- All documents and metadata are available through ‘content negotiation’: content can be retrieved by using the URI (identifier) of an element as a URL.
- Metadata is accessible through a SPARQL endpoint
- Citations between regulations are made available in a format suitable for social network analysis (Pajek/Gephi)
- A generic conversion script for transforming any legislative XML to CEN MetaLex
For more information, have a look at the presentation on slideshare, or contact Rinke Hoekstra directly.
A report on this work will be published as part of the proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2011: “Rinke Hoekstra. The MetaLex Document Server – Legal Documents as Versioned Linked Data”
August 24th, 2011
On behalf of the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam, the Leibniz Center for Law has entered a collaboration with the Network Institute of the VU University Amsterdam.
“The Network Institute’s research mission is to come to a better scientific understanding of the emerging networked world in all its technological, economic and social aspects, and to help further its proper development.
The Network Institute brings together researchers from many different academic disciplines, including information systems, communication science, computer science, business and management research, knowledge management, marketing and strategy, economics, artificial intelligence, mathematics, and organization science.”
Collaborating with the Network Institute will allow the Leibniz Center to tap into a rich source of likeminded researchers, and at the same time brings the challenges of the field of AI and Law to the attention of a multidisciplinary research network.
For more information, please contact Rinke Hoekstra.
August 24th, 2011
A short article about our center appeared in the August 2010 issue of SCRIPTed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society.
August 16th, 2010
On Thursday May 14 2009 Radboud Winkels and Emile de Maat of the Leibniz Center for Law will give a lecture for the Amsterdam Circle for Law and Language with the title: From Legal Language to Computer Language (Van Juridische Taal naar Computertaal).
The Leibniz Center for Law develops computer models of statutes as well as methods by which the ‘translation’ from legal language to computer language may become automated. A trustworthy, neutral interpretation of the legal text, without added details, is of great importance. In the presentation the speakers will explain these ‘translation’-methods and their ‘technical’ approach to legal interpretation with examples from various areas of law.
May 11th, 2009
Interview met Rinke Hoekstra, ten behoeve van de website voor aankomende studenten.
July 22nd, 2008
Tom van Engers reageert in de NRC van 12 juli op een opiniestuk van de hand van Frank Kuitenbrouwer (Opiniepagina, 8 juli) waarin deze de wijziging op de Bekendmakingswet bekritiseert.
Lees hier het stuk van Frank Kuitenbrouwer, en hier het stuk van Tom van Engers.
July 13th, 2008
The TRIAS Telematica project, coordinated by the Leibniz Center for Law, has been selected as one of the five best e-Learning practices in Europe. The methods used to arrive at this conclusion were a combination of desk research, reports and project conclusions deriving from five years, thematic discussions and the validation of conclusions and recommendations in two thematic seminars in Sofia and Copenhagen.
The aims of TRIAS Telematica are to identify the training needs of change agents, process innovators in government agencies who request rethinking of eGovernment services and to create an infrastructure for the exchange of best practices, the exchange of project leaders and students, and the exchange of qualified people among European countries.
For this purpose an e-Learning environment was developed using semantic wiki and various training methods including a simulation game.
A successor project is being planned as well as a second summer course.
For more information on the project see: http://www.triastelematica.org/
February 11th, 2008
We are very pleased to announce the book “15 Years of Knowledge Management”, part of the series on Advances in Knowledge Management of Ergon Verlag. This book contains some significant contributions that represent different issues addressed in 15 years of Knowledge Management research.
Advances in Knowledge Management Vol. 3
Schreinemakers, Jos F. (†)- van Engers, Tom M. (Eds.)
15 Years of Knowledge Management
2007. 263 p. – 150 x 225 mm. Hardcover
ISBN : 978-3-89913-580-0
The book is available through the website of the publisher Ergon Verlag.
For more information, please send an email to Tom van Engers.
September 19th, 2007
The Leibniz Center for Law is part of the consortium that won the open tender for the
development of the national online all-in-one service for environmental permits
(Landelijke Voorziening Omgevingsloket, or LVO) in the Netherlands.
Continue Reading September 6th, 2007
The LeX school is an intensive, 6-day program aimed at providing knowledge of the most significant ICT standards emerging for legislation, an understanding of their impact in the different phases of the legislative process, awareness of the tools based on legislative standards, and the ability to participate in the preparation and use of standard-compliant documents throughout the participate in law-making process.
Continue Reading July 16th, 2007
We are pleased to announce the release of the LKIF core ontology of basic legal concepts. This ontology was developed within the ESTRELLA project to provide a standard vocabulary for legal reasoning services on the Semantic Web, and especially the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF).
The LKIF ontology is inspired by the commonsense orientation of the (discontinued) LRI Core ontology effort. It consists of 14 ontology modules, describing concepts that range from general concepst such as time, place, change and process to the concepts most central to the legal field such as actions, transactions, beliefs, intentions, expressions and norms.
For more information, please consult the LKIF Core ontology website, browse the online documentation, or download the ESTRELLA Deliverable 1.4.
The ontology can be loaded directly into your favorite OWL Ontology editor from: http://www.estrellaproject.org/lkif-core/lkif-core.owl
April 17th, 2007
Legal Atlas is a tool for viewing both spatial regulations and the associated geospatial information in the form of maps. It is a showcase of how MetaLex integration with existing standards, such as GML and OWL, can result in robust and feature-rich knowledge management solutions. Please read the included license.
Legal Atlas is being developed within the project Digitale Uitwisseling Ruimtelijke Plannen (DURP; digital exchange of spatial plans), initiated by the Dutch government. Legal Atlas enables dynamic references between spatial regulations (encoded in MetaLex v1.3.1 format) and the associated geospatial information. This information is encoded using IMRO2006, the Dutch government standard for XML exchange of spatial plans. It is compatible with GML 3.1.
References between texts and plans are resolved via SPARQL queries on OWL models of both the regulation and the relevant geospatial information.
For more information, please visit the MetaLex website: http://legacy.metalex.eu/general/legal-atlas-v011a.
August 11th, 2006
Since a few days, Google has updated some of the sattelite imagery of the Netherlands (and finally changed the capital from The Hague to Amsterdam) in Google Earth.
This breakthrough allows us to offer (exclusively) a Google Earth Placemark for the offices of the Leibniz Center for Law, in the center of Amsterdam. You can download it here: http://www.leibnizcenter.org/docs/Leibniz-Center-for-Law.kmz.
April 26th, 2006
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