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.
JURIX 2009 – 16-18 December 2009, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The 22nd edition of the Jurix Conference will take place on 17 and 18 December 2009 (Workshops and Tutorials on 16 December). The conference is hosted by the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Program Chair: Guido Governatori, NICTA, Australia
Organizing Chair: Kees van Noortwijk, Erasmus Universitiy Rotterdam, The Netherlands
See: http://www.frg.eur.nl/jurix2009 for more details.
November 10th, 2009
The Leibniz Center for Law seeks an outstanding PhD candidate for a new research project called IMPACT in the area of argument reconstruction and formalisation.
Continue Reading November 10th, 2009
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
LOAIT ‘09
3rd Workshop on Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques
joint with
2nd Workshop on Semantic Processing of Legal Texts
June 8th, 2009, Barcelona, Spain
held in conjunction with ICAIL-09
Paper submission: April 3rd, 2009
Over the last years the management of legal information has been significantly influenced by approaches from Artificial Intelligence (AI). In particular, legal reasoning, advanced semantic and cross-language legal information retrieval, legal drafting and document classification, have proved to be fertile areas where ontologies are successfully applied.
The ways in which ontologies are developed and used, can be characterised as either bottom-up or top-down. The two methodologies are usually targeted towards different aspects of legal information. For instance, machine learning techniques are used for legal document classification, legal information retrieval, legal knowledge discovery and extraction; similarly Natural Language Processing technology has been successfully implemented to extract knowledge from legal texts. As the use of these techniques becomes more widespread, it also becomes clearer how to enhance their performance. One way of doing this is to employ structured (domain) knowledge to reduce complexity and support correct reasoning. Legal ontologies play a crucial role in providing such knowledge at various levels of specificity and formality.
On the other hand, legal knowledge representation addresses key issues related to the support of legal reasoning. Here, ontologies play the role of a shared vocabulary or of a (formal) conceptualisation of legal notions. These ontologies often stand in the tradition of legal theory and philosophy, but may be grounded in common sense as well.
The LOAIT workshop aims to offer an overview of theories and well-founded applications that combine Legal Ontologies and AI techniques. The workshop will constitute a valuable opportunity for researchers and practitioners in AI, AI&Law, Legal Ontologies and related fields to discuss problems, exchange information and compare perspectives.
The first and second editions of the LOAIT Workshop, held in conjunction with ICAIL’05 and ICAIL’07, provided a valuable opportunity for researchers and practitioners in Artificial Intelligence and Law to discuss problems, exchange information and compare perspectives on Legal Ontologies and their automatic use.
A selection of papers of LOAIT ‘07 were published in the volume J. Breuker, P. Casanovas, M. Klein, E. Francesconi (eds.) Law, Ontologies and Semantic Web (IOS Press, 2009), collecting state-of-the-art contributions on legal ontologies. These results point at an increasing interest of the larger AI&Law community in the study and the use of Legal Ontologies as well as in Natural Language Technologies for legal information extraction.
Recently ontology learning approaches for the legal domain were discussed in the LREC 2008 Workshop on “Semantic Processing of Legal Texts”, and selected contributions will be published in a Springer volume (Francesconi E., Montemagni S., Peters W., Tiscornia D. (eds.)). These results pointed, and still do, at an increasing interest of the larger AI&Law community in the study and the use of Legal Ontologies.
In this third edition of LOAIT, we would like to focus our attention on two main research area: Legal Knowledge Representation as a top-down approach, and Ontology Learning from Legal Texts as a bottom-up approach on legal ontologies. Authors are invited to submit papers describing original completed work, work in progress, interesting problems, use cases or research trends related to one or more of the topics of interest listed below. Submitted papers will be refereed by two experts based on originality, significance and technical soundness.
Topics of Interest include but are not limited to:
* Knowledge discovery and organization by AI approaches
* Design Patterns in Legal Ontologies
* Ontologies, Legal Standards and machine learning
* Ontologies and machine learning for classification tasks
* Text Categorization and Ontology
* AI techniques on legal standards
* Ontologies and Semantic Web
* Legal Ontologies for Semantic Web Services
* Ontology learning from legal texts, including sub-areas such as ontology customization, ontology merging, ontology extension, ontology evolution, etc.
* Ontology Matching
* Lexicons for Legal Applications (Information Retrieval, Legal Drafting)
* Natural Language Processing and Legal Ontologies
* Natural Language Processing and Legal Information Retrieval and Extraction
* Information Extraction from legal texts
* Engineering of regulatory ontologies: conceptual analysis, representation, modularization and layering, reusability, evolution and dynamics, etc.
* Multilingual and terminological aspects of regulatory ontologies
* Ontological views on models of legal reasoning: regulatory compliance, case-based reasoning, reasoning with uncertainty, etc.
* Experiences with projects and applications involving regulatory ontologies in legal knowledge based systems, legal information retrieval, e-governments, e-commerce
* Modeling legal norms, concepts, rules, cases, principals, values and procedures, methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems
* Regulatory ontologies of property rights, persons and organizations, legal procedures, contracts, legal causality, etc.
Author Guidelines
* Paper length: max. 10 pages
* Paper format: Springer style format
* Paper Submission: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=loait2009
* Proceedings will be published in paper and electronic formats by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
Important Dates
* April 3, 2009: Paper submission
* April 27, 2009: Notification of acceptance
* May 4, 2009: Camera-ready paper
* June 8, 2009: Workshop
Program Chairs
Nuria Casellas (Institute of Law and Technology, University Autonoma of Barcelona)
Enrico Francesconi (Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG-CNR) Florence, Italy)
Rinke Hoekstra (Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam)
Simonetta Montemagni (Institute of Computational Linguistics (ILC-CNR), PISA, Italy)
Program Committee
Trevor J.M. Bench-Capon, University of Liverpool, UK
V. Richard Benjamins, Telefónica R&D, Spain
Alexander Boer, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherland
Joost Breuker, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherland
Thomas Bruce, Cornell Law School, US
Paul Buitelaar, DERI research institute in Galway, Ireland
Pompeu Casanovas, Institute of Law and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Aldo Gangemi, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Italy
Roberto García, Universitat de Lleida, Spain
Mustafa Jarrar, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Michael Klein, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherland
Alessandro Lenci, Department of Linguistics, University of Pisa, Italy
Wim Peters, Natural Language Processing Research Group, University of Sheffield, UK
Giovanni Sartor, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Marco Schorlemmer, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Erich Schweighofer, University of Vienna, Austria
Barry Smith, University at Buffalo, US
York Sure, SAP Research, Germany
Daniela Tiscornia, Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG-CNR), Italy
Tom van Engers, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherland
Réka Vas, Department of Information Systems, University Corvinus of Budapest, Hungary
Radboud Winkels, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherland
March 31st, 2009
On the 4th of December, the Leibniz offices have moved from the Oudemanhuispoort to the more spacious Oost-Indisch Huis (pictures). Our new visiting address will be:
Kloveniersburgwal 48
1012 CX Amsterdam
Our phone numbers will remain unchanged.
(see map)
October 29th, 2008
WORKSHOP ON LEGISLATIVE XML 2008
the Law in the Semantic Web and beyond
December 10th, 2008
Law Faculty, University of Florence (Italy)
within JURIX 2008 Conference (10-13 December 2008)
http://www.ittig.cnr.it/Jurix08
Continue Reading October 20th, 2008
ICAIL 2009 will be held under the auspices of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL), an organization devoted to promoting research and development in the field of AI and Law with members throughout the world. ICAIL provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest research results and practical applications and stimulates interdisciplinary and international collaboration. Previous ICAIL conferences have been held biennially since 1987, with proceedings published by ACM.
Continue Reading August 8th, 2008
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
ISMICK 2008 invites authors to submit original papers on research, practice and experience in the field of knowledge management, and in particular related to knowledge based innovation in and across public and private organizations. Academic as well as business practice and consultancy experience papers are welcome. Papers are to be electronically submitted through the ISMICK 2008 website at www.ismick.org. The deadline for submission is 20 June 2008 July 15 2008.
Additional information can be found at http://www.ismick.org.
March 18th, 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
The papers of the Jurix 2007 Workshop on Legislative XML are available online here.
January 3rd, 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
Registration for the ICAIL 2007 conference has opened and the results of the review process are in. The Leibniz center will present two papers:
- Legal Atlas: Access to Legal Sources through Maps
Radboud Winkels, Alexander Boer, Erik Hupkes (Full Paper)
- Argumentation Structures in Legal Dossiers
Jobien Sombekke, Tom van Engers (Short Paper)
Papers will be made available through this website. For a full list of accepted papers, please consult the ICAIL 2007 website.
April 17th, 2007
ICAIL 2007 will be held under the auspices of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL), an organization devoted to promoting research and development in the field of AI and Law with members throughout the world. ICAIL provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest research results and practical applications and stimulates interdisciplinary and international collaboration.
See http://www.iaail.org.
January 23rd, 2007
On 7-9 December, the annual Jurix conference was held in Paris, at the Université Paris II. At this conference, two papers on the work of the Leibniz Center where presented.
Continue Reading December 13th, 2006
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
The annual Jurix conference took place at the Free University Brussels (VUB) on 8-10 december. It was both an intellectually as well as socially rewarding and inspiring event. Many thanks to the organisation!
We had the pleasure of presenting two papers on our work. The first by Alexander Boer - co-authored by Tom van Engers and Radboud Winkels - about a preference-based representation of norms, entitled “Mixing Legal and Non-Legal Norms”. This paper, which is part of his PhD research, argues that legal norms are in may contexts best understood as expressions of a ceteris paribus preference, and that this viewpoint adequately accounts for normative conflict and contrary-to-duty norms. This paper sparked some very interesting discussions, not in the least because of a possible link with the work of Guido Governatori and Antonino Rotolo: “Norm Modifications in Defeasible Logic”
The second paper, by Tom van Engers - a joint research abstract with Ron van Gog and Arian Jacobs - is titled “How Technology can help reducing the Legal Burden” and explains how relatively simple technology can help governments to reduce the burden imposed by legal regulations.
The work by Katie Atkinson and Trevor Bench-Capon, titled “Theory and Practice in AI and Law: A Response to Branting” gives a clear overview of recent, and not-so-recent work in our field, and describes a useful framework for positioning various `branches’ of research. A very insightful paper, and perhaps less controversial than our own Functional Ontology of Law (Andre Valente, 1995).
Many other authors reported on their work, and by the looks of it the field is reaching consensus on the currently most prominent issues: harmonization and modification, linguistic approaches to legal information extraction and retrieval, formal representation of legislation, legal argumentation, and forensics support.
Hopefully the pdf-versions of all papers will soon be available online through the Jurix website.
Jurix Website
Jurix 2005 Conference website
January 16th, 2006
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