Internet DRAFT - draft-spinosa-urn-lex
draft-spinosa-urn-lex
Network Working Group P. Spinosa
Internet-Draft
Intended status: Informational E. Francesconi
Expires: 17 June 2024 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
C. Lupo
15 December 2023
A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for Sources of Law (LEX)
draft-spinosa-urn-lex-21
Abstract
This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace
Identification (NID) convention for identifying, naming, assigning,
and managing persistent resources in the legal domain. This
specification is published to allow adoption of a common convention
by multiple jurisdictions to facilitate ease of reference and access
to resources in the legal domain.
This specification is an independent submission to the RFC series.
It is not a standard, and does not have the consensus of the IETF.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 17 June 2024.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2023 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. The Purpose of Namespace "lex" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4. General Characteristics of the System . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5. Linking a LEX Name to a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6. Use of LEX Names in References . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.7. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.8. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.9. Syntax Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.10. Namespace Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2. Registration of LEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1. Identifier Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2. Jurisdiction-code Register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3. Conformance with URN Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4. Validation Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3. General Syntax and Features of the LEX Identifier . . . . . . 14
3.1. Allowed and Not Allowed Characters . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2. Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3. Case Sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4. Unicode Characters outside the ASCII Range . . . . . . . 15
3.5. Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.6. Date Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4. Specific Syntax and Features of the LEX Identifier . . . . . 18
4.1. Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks . . . . . . . . 19
4.2. Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3. Ordinal Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier - Baseline
structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.1. Basic Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.2. Model of Sources of Law Representation . . . . . . . . . 20
5.3. The Structure of the Local Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.4. Structure of the Document Identifier at "Work" Level . . 22
5.5. Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.6. Structure of the Document Identifier at "Expression"
Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.7. Structure of the Document Identifier at "Manifestation"
Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.8. Sources of Law References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
6. Specific Syntax of the Identifier at "Work" Level . . . . . . 28
6.1. The authority Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.1.1. Indication of the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.1.2. Multiple Issuers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.1.3. Indication of the Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.1.4. Indication of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.1.5. Indication of the Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.1.6. Conventions for the Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.2. The measure Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.2.1. Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure . 30
6.2.2. Further Specification to the Type of Measure . . . . 30
6.2.3. Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.2.4. Relations between Measure and Authority in the
Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.3. The Details Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.3.1. Indication of the Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.3.2. Multiple Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.3.3. Unnumbered Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6.3.4. Multiple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6.4. The annex Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.4.1. Formal Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.4.2. Annexes of Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7. Specific Syntax of the Version Element of the "Expression" . 35
7.1. The version Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
7.1.1. Different Versions of a Legislative Document . . . . 35
7.1.2. Identification of the Version . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
8. Summary of the Syntax of the Uniform Names of the "lex"
Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
9. The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment . . . . . . . . . . 41
9.1. Specifying the jurisdiction Element of the LEX
Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
9.2. Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment . . . . . . 41
9.3. Identifier Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
9.4. Identifier Persistence Considerations . . . . . . . . . . 43
10. Recommendations for the Resolution Process . . . . . . . . . 43
10.1. The General Architecture of the System . . . . . . . . . 44
10.2. Catalogues for Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
10.3. Suggested Resolver Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
13. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
14. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
14.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
14.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
1. Introduction
1.1. The Purpose of Namespace "lex"
The purpose of the "lex" namespace is to assign a unique identifier,
in well-defined format, to documents that are sources of law. To the
extent of this namespace, "sources of law" include any legal document
within the domain of legislation, case law and administrative acts or
regulations; moreover potential "sources of law" (acts under the
process of law formation, as bills) are included as well. Therefore
"legal doctrine" is explicitly not covered.
The identifier is conceived so that its construction depends only on
the characteristics (details) of the document itself and, therefore,
it is independent from the document on-line availability, its
physical location, and access mode. The identifier itself is
assigned by the jurisdiction of the identified document. Even a
document that is not available online may, nevertheless, have a LEX
URN identifier.
Such an identifier can be used as a way to represent references (and
more generally, any type of relation) among various sources of law.
In an on-line environment with resources distributed among different
Web publishers, identifiers, in terms of uniform resource names,
allow a simplified global interconnection of legal documents by means
of automated hypertext linking. LEX URNs consist of persistent and
location-independent identifiers and are particularly useful when
they can be mapped into or associated with locators such as HTTP
URLs. Moreover, LEX URNs details can be used as a reference to
create HTTP-based persistent and location-independent identifiers
[RFC3986]. Such kind of identifiers have been suggested within the
set of principles and technologies, known as "Linked Data", as a
basic infrastructure of the semantic web to enable data sharing and
reuse on a massive scale.
1.2. Community Considerations
The use of the "lex" namespace facilitates the interoperability of
information systems used in the Public Administration at the national
and international level. Moreover it allows the distribution of the
legal information towards a federated architecture. In such an
architecture, documents are directly managed by the issuing
authorities, with resulting benefits in information authenticity,
quality and currency. A shared identification mechanism of resources
guarantees that a distributed system will be as efficient and
effective as a comparable centralized system.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Creators of Internet content that references legal materials -
including publishers operating well outside the traditional arenas of
legal publishing - benefit by the registration of the namespace
because it facilitates the linking of legal documents, whether by
manual or automated means, and reduces the cost of maintaining
documents that contain such references.
Any citizen or organisation with Internet web browser capability will
have the possibility to use the namespace and its associated
application, registers, and resolution services, to facilitate
document access (if available).
LEX URNs also identify offline resources, for instance by making it
easier for organizations such as legislative bodies, law libraries,
and legal publishers to identify resources and generate links between
such resources (e.g., for the purpose of stable citation).
1.3. Background
This specification of a unique identifier for legal documents follows
a number of initiatives in the field of legal document management.
Since 2001 the Italian Government, through the National Center for
Information Technology in the Public Administration, the Ministry of
Justice and CNR (the National Research Council of Italy) promoted the
NormeInRete project. It was aimed at introducing standards for
sources of law description and identification using XML and URN
techniques.
Other national initiatives in Europe introduced standards for the
description of legal sources [FRAN]. Collaborations between
government, national research institutes, and universities, have
defined national XML standards for legal document management, as well
as schemes for legal document identification. Outside of Europe,
similar initiatives have addressed similar problems [FRAN]. Several
of these identifiers are based on a URN schema.
In today's information society the processes of political, social and
economic integration of European Union member states as well as the
increasing integration of the world-wide legal and economic processes
are causing a growing interest in exchanging legal information
knowledge at national and trans-national levels. The growing desire
for improved quality and accessibility of legal information amplifies
the need for interoperability among legal information systems across
national boundaries. A common well-defined schema used to identify
sources of law at international level is an essential prerequisite
for interoperability.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Interest groups within several countries have already expressed their
intention to adopt a shared solution based on a URN technique.
The need for a unique identifier of sources of law in different EU
Member States, based on open standards and able to provide advanced
modalities of document hyper-linking, has been expressed in several
conferences (as [LVI]) by representatives of the Publications Office
of the European Union (OP), with the aim of promoting
interoperability among national and European institution information
systems. Similar concerns have been raised by international groups
concerned with free access to legal information, and the Permanent
Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law [HCPIL]
that encourage State Parties to "adopt neutral methods of citation of
their legal materials, including methods that are medium-neutral,
provider-neutral and internationally consistent.". In a similar
direction the CEN Metalex initiative is moving, at European level,
towards the definition of a standard interchange format for sources
of law, including recommendations for defining naming conventions to
them.
The need of unique identifiers for sources of law is of particular
interest also in the domain of case law. This is acutely felt within
both common law systems, where cases are the main law sources, and
civil law systems, in order to provide an integrated access to cases
and legislation, as well as to track the relationships between them.
This domain is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation in
case law information systems, which usually lack interoperability.
In the European Union, the community institutions have stressed the
need for citizens, businesses, lawyers, prosecutors and judges to
become more aware not only of (directly applicable) EU law, but also
of the various national legal systems. The growing importance of
national judiciaries for the application of Community law was
stressed in the resolution of the European Parliament of 9 July 2008
on the role of the national judge in the European judicial system.
Similarly the the Council of the European Union has underlined the
importance of cross-border access to national case law, as well as
the need for its standardisation, in view of an integrated access in
a decentralized architecture. In this view the Working Party on
Legal Data Processing (e-Law) of the Council of the European Union
formed a task group to study the possibilities for improving cross-
border access to national case law. Taking notice of the report of
the Working Party's task group the Council of the EU decided in 2009
to elaborate on a uniform, European system for the identification of
case law (ECLI: European Case-Law Identifier) and uniform Dublin
Core-based set of metadata.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
The Council of the European Union invited the Member States to
introduce in the legal information systems the European Legislation
Identifier (ELI), an http-based Semantic Web oriented identification
system for European Union and Member States legislation.
The LEX identifier (also referred in this text as "LEX name") is
conceived to be general enough so as to provide guidance at the core
of the standard and sufficient flexibility to cover a wide variety of
needs for identifying all the legal documents of different nature,
namely legislative, case-law and administrative acts. Moreover, it
can be effectively used within a federative environment where
different publishers (public and private) can provide their own items
of a legal document (that is there is more than one manifestation of
the same legal document).
Specifications and syntax rules of LEX identifier can be used also
for http-based naming convention to cope with different requirements
in legal information management, for example the need of having an
identifier compliant with the Linked Open Data principles.
This document supplements the required name syntax with a naming
convention that interprets all these recommendations into an original
solution for sources of law identification.
The following entities support the publication of this proposal:
* CNR (National Research Council of Italy) - Italy;
* Agency for Digital Italy (AgID) - Presidency of the Council of
Ministers - Italy;
* PRODASEN - IT Department of the Federal Senate - Brazil;
* LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - USA.
1.4. General Characteristics of the System
The specifications in this document promote interoperability among
legal information systems by defining a namespace convention and
structure that will create and manage identifiers for legal
documents. The identifiers are intended to be:
* globally unique
* transparent
* reversible
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
* persistent
* location-independent, and
* language-neutral.
These qualities facilitate legal document management and a mechanism
of stable cross-collections and cross-country references.
Transparency means that given an act and its relevant metadata
(issuing authority, type of measure, etc.), it is possible to create
the related URN that is able to uniquely identify the related act in
a manner that is reversible (from an act to its URN and from a URN to
the related act).
Language-neutrality is an especially important feature that promotes
adoption of the standard by organizations that must adhere to
official-language requirements. This specification provides guidance
to both public and private groups that create, promulgate, and
publish legal documents. Registrants wish to minimize the potential
for creating conflicting proprietary schemes, while preserving
sufficient flexibility to allow for diverse document types and to
respect the need for local control of collections by an equally
diverse assortment of administrative entities.
The challenge is to provide the right amount guidance at the core of
the specification while providing sufficient flexibility to cover a
wide variety of needs. LEX does this by splitting the identifier
into parts. The first part uses a pre- existing standard
specification ("country/jurisdiction name standard") to indicate the
country (or more generally the jurisdiction) of origin for the legal
document being identified; the remainder ("local name") is intended
for local use in identifying documents issued in that country or
jurisdiction.
The second part depends only on the system of sources of law
identification operating in that nation and it is mainly composed by
formalized information related to the enacting authority, the type of
measure, the details and possibly the annex.
The identification system based on uniform names includes:
* a schema for assigning names capable of representing unambiguously
any addressed source of law (namely legislation, case law and
administrative acts), issued by any authority (intergovernmental,
supranational, national, regional and local) at any time (past,
present and future);
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
* a resolution mechanism - in a distributed environment - that ties
a uniform name to the on-line location of the corresponding
resource(s).
This document considers the first of these requirements. It also
contains a few references to the architecture of the resolution
service and to the corresponding software.
1.5. Linking a LEX Name to a Document
The LEX name is linked to the document through meta-information which
may be specified as follows:
* within the document itself through a specific element within an
XML schema or by an [W3C.HTML] META tag;
* externally by means of a Resource Description Framework
[W3C.rdf-schema] triple, a specific attribute in a database, etc.
At least one of these references is necessary to enable automated
construction and update of catalogues (distributed and centralized)
and the implementation of resolvers that associate the uniform name
of a document with its physical location(s). LEX assumes no
particular relationship between the originator of the document, its
publisher, and the implementer of catalogues or resolution services.
1.6. Use of LEX Names in References
LEX names can be used in references as an HREF attribute value of the
hypertext link to the referred document. This link can be created in
two ways:
* by manually inserting in the referring document the link with the
uniform name: this is a burdensome procedure, especially for
documents that are already on-line;
* by automatically constructing (either permanently or temporarily)
the link with the uniform name, through reference parsers of a
text: this is a more time-saving procedure even if subject to a
certain percentage of errors, since references are not always
accurate or complete. This solution could nevertheless be
acceptable for already published documents.
Whatever method is adopted, new documents produced in whatever format
(for example XML, XHTML, etc) should express references through the
uniform name of the document referred to.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
1.7. Definitions
The following terms are used in these specifications:
* Source of Law: a general concept to refer to legislation, case
law, regulations and administrative acts. In its broadest sense,
the source of law is anything that can be conceived as the
originator of 'erga omnes' legal rules. In this document "Source
of Law" refers also to acts during their making such as bills that
might or might not become laws;
* Jurisdictional Registrar: an organization that shares and defines
in any jurisdiction the assignment of the main components of the
resource identifier through which the identifier uniqueness is
guaranteed.
1.8. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
1.9. Syntax Used in this Document
This document uses the syntax common to many Internet RFCs, which is
based on the ABNF (Augmented Backus-Naur Form) [RFC5234] meta-
language.
1.10. Namespace Registration
The "lex" namespace has already been registered in the "Formal URN
Namespaces" registry.
2. Registration of LEX
2.1. Identifier Structure
The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows:
"urn:lex:" NSS
where NSS is the Namespace Specific String composed as follows:
NSS = jurisdiction ":" local-name
where:
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
* jurisdiction identifies the scope (state, regional, municipal,
supranational or of an organization) where a set of sources of law
have validity. It is also possible to represent international
organizations (either states or public administrations or private
entities);
* local-name is the uniform name of the source of law in the country
or jurisdiction where it is issued; its internal structure is
common to the already adopted schemas. It represents all aspects
of an intellectual production, from its initial idea, through its
evolution during the time, to its realisation by different means
(paper, digital, etc.).
The jurisdiction element is composed of two specific fields:
jurisdiction = jurisdiction-code *(";" jurisdiction-unit)
where:
* jurisdiction-code is usually the identification code of the
country where the source of law is issued.
To facilitate the transparency of the name, the jurisdiction-code
follows usually the rules of identification of other Internet
applications, based on domain name (for details and special cases
see Section 2.2).
Due to the differences in representation in the various languages
of a country, for an easier identification of the country the use
the standard [ISO3166-1] is strongly RECOMMENDED.
Therefore a urn-lex ID always begins with a sequence of ASCII
characters: "urn:lex:ccTLD". For all the other components that
follow the jurisdiction-code, the Jurisdictional Registrar decides
the mode of representation (ASCII or UTF-8 %-encoding) (see
Section 3.4).
Where applicable, the domain name of the country or multinational
or international organisation is used.
If such information is not available for a particular institution,
a specific code will be defined (see Section 2.2). Examples
reported in this document are hypothetical and assume that the
corresponding domain name is used for the jurisdiction-code.
* jurisdiction-unit are the possible administrative hierarchical
sub- structures defined by each country or organisation within
their specific legal system. This additional information can be
used in case two or more levels of legislative or judicial
production exist (e.g., federal, state and municipality level) and
the same bodies may be present in each jurisdiction. Therefore
acts of the same type issued by similar authorities in different
areas differ for the jurisdiction-unit specification.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
An example can be the following:
"br:governo:decreto" (decree of federal government),
"br;sao.paulo:governo:decreto" (decree of SU+00E3o Paulo state)
"br;sao.paulo;campinas:governo:decreto" (decree of Campinas
municipality).
Examples (hypothetical) of sources of law identifiers are:
urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2003-09-21;456
(Italian act)
urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-12-06;321
(French act)
urn:lex:es:estado:ley:2002-07-12;123
(Spanish act)
urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963
(Glarus Swiss Canton decree)
urn:lex:eu:commission:directive:2010-03-09;2010-19-EU
(EU Commission Directive)
urn:lex:us:supreme.court:decision:1978-04-28;77-5953
(US SC decision: Riley vs Illinois)
urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273
(Decision of the Belgian Council of State)
2.2. Jurisdiction-code Register
It is planned to create a new registry for jurisdiction-code, with
the following format:
* jurisdiction-code: the identifier of jurisdiction, assigned to the
country or organisation;
* jurisdiction: the official name of the jurisdiction, country or
organisation;
* registrant: essential information to identify the organization
that requested the registration of the code. The registrant will
be responsible for its DNS zone and for the attribution of sub-
zone delegations, and so on. It is RECOMMENDED that each
jurisdiction create a registry of all delegated levels so that the
organization responsible of each sub-zone can easily be
identified;
* reference: a reference to the defining document (if any).
The table is initially empty. Possible example entries are:
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
"br"; "Brazil"; "Prodasen, Federal Senate, address, contact";
\[reference\]
"eu"; "European Union"; "DG Digit, European Commission, address,
contact"; \[reference\]
"un.org"; "United Nations"; "DPI, United Nations, address,
contact"; \[reference\]
CNR is responsible for the jurisdiction-code and the root lex-
nameserver registries of the resolution routing.
A new Jurisdictional Registrar will contact CNR or the Designated
Expert(s) according to the established rules of governance (published
in the CNR website dedicated to the LEX governance). The application
will be evaluated according to the Jurisdictional Registrar
authoritativeness and the offered guarantees. The Designated
Expert(s) will evaluate such applications, with a similar approach as
of the DNS. Typically such applications should come from public
administrations, as authorities enacting sources of law.
The adopted registration policy is similar to that of the "Expert
Review" as specified in [RFC8126]. Designated Experts will assign
jurisdiction codes based on the following principles:
* If a request comes from a jurisdiction that corresponds to a
country and the jurisdiction code is the same as a top level
ccTLD, then the top level ccTLD should be used as the jurisdiction
code;
* If a request comes from a jurisdiction that corresponds to a
multi- national (e.g., European Union) or international (e.g.,
United Nations, World Trade Organization) organizations the Top
Level Domain Name (e.g., "eu") or the Domain Name (e.g., "un.org",
"wto.org") of the organization should be used as the jurisdiction
code;
* in case when such multi-national or international organization
does not have a registered domain, Designated Expert(s) should
assign something like name.lex.arpa, where name will be the
acronym of the organization name, in the language chosen by the
organization itself. For example, the jurisdiction code of the
European Economic Community could be "eec.lex.arpa". Anyway the
alias mechanism allows to have acronyms in different languages.
Jurisdiction codes MUST NOT be renamed, because that would violate
rules that URN assignments are persistent.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Jurisdiction codes MUST NOT ever be deleted. They can only be marked
as "obsolete", i.e. closed for new assignments within the
jurisdiction. Requests to obsolete a jurisdiction code are also
processed by Designated Expert.
Designated Expert(s) can unilaterally initiate allocation or
obsolescence of a jurisdiction code.
Request for new jurisdiction code assignment must include the
organization or country requesting it and Contact information (email)
of who requested the assignment.
2.3. Conformance with URN Syntax
The "lex" NID syntax conforms to [RFC8141]. However, a series of
characters are reserved to identify elements or sub-elements, or for
future extensions of the LEX naming convention (see Section 3.2).
2.4. Validation Mechanism
The Jurisdictional Registrar (or those it delegates) of each adhering
country or organization is responsible for the definition or
acceptance of the uniform name's primary elements (issuing authority
and type of legal measure).
2.5. Scope
Global interest. In fact each body that enacts sources of law can
identify them by this scheme. Furthermore, other bodies (even not
enacting sources of law, such as newspaper or magazine publishers,
etc.) aiming to refer legal documents, can unequivocally identify
them by this scheme.
3. General Syntax and Features of the LEX Identifier
This section lists the general features applicable to all
jurisdictions.
3.1. Allowed and Not Allowed Characters
These characters are defined in accordance with the [RFC8141]
"Uniform Resource Names (URNs)". For various reasons, later
explained, in the "lex" NSS only a subset of characters is allowed.
All other characters are either eliminated or converted.
For the full syntax of the uniform names in the "lex" space, please
see Section 8.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
3.2. Reserved Characters
The following characters are reserved in the specific "lex"
namespace:
"@" separator of the expression, that contains information on
version and language;
"$" separator of the manifestation, that contains information on
format, editor, etc.;
":" separator of the main elements of the name at any entity;
";" separator of level. It identifies the introduction of an element
at a hierarchically lower level, or the introduction of a
specification;
"+" separator of the repetitions of an entire main element (e.g.,
multiple authorities);
"|" separator between different formats of the same element (e.g.,
date);
"," separator of the repetitions of individual components in the main
elements, each bearing the same level of specificity (e.g.,
multiple numbers);
"~" separator of the partition identifier in references (e.g.,
paragraph of an article);
"*" and "!" are reserved for future expansions.
To keep backward compatibility with existing applications in some
jurisdictions, the "lex" NID syntax does not include the use of the
character "/" in this version.
This character is always converted into "-", except in the formal
annexes (see Section 6.4.1).
3.3. Case Sensitivity
For all the languages where different cases (upper or lower cases) or
different spelling of the same word are possible, names belonging to
"lex" namespace are case-insensitive. It is RECOMMENDED that, in
latin alphabet, they be created in lower case, but names that differ
only in case, or in the spelling, of the same word MUST be considered
to be equivalent.
(e.g., "Ministry" will be recorded as "ministry").
3.4. Unicode Characters outside the ASCII Range
In order to exploit DNS as a routing tool towards the proper
resolution system, to keep editing and communication more simple and
to avoid character percent-encoding, it is RECOMMENDED that the
characters outside the ASCII range (e.g. national characters,
diacritic signs, ...) are turned into base ASCII characters (e.g.,
the Italian term "sanitU+00E0" replaced into "sanita", the French
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
term "ministU+00E8re" replaced into "ministere"), in case by
transliteration (e.g. "MU+00FCnchen" replaced into "muenchen").
This mapping consists of:
* transcription from non-Latin alphabets;
* transliteration of some signs (diaeresis, eszett, ...);
* preservation of the only basic characters, eliminating the signs
placed above (accents, tilde, ...), below (cedilla, little tail,
...) or on (oblique cut, ...).
The most suitable, well-known and widespread mapping system for a
given language MUST be chosen by the jurisdiction, or, in agreement
with this one, by the jurisdiction-unit in case of different
languages in the various regions, also taking into account the
choices made for the same language by other jurisdictions.
Certainly this mapping is simpler and more feasible for languages
that use the Latin alphabet and gradually becomes more complex both
for other alphabets and for writing systems with opposite orientation
(from right to left) or based on ideographic symbols.
If this conversion is not acceptable by a specific jurisdiction or it
is not available in a given language, UNICODE MUST be used and, for
accessing network protocols, any UNICODE code points outside the
ASCII range MUST be converted in UTF-8 %-encoding according to
[RFC3986] and [RFC3629].
In this case it should be noted that the generated URN (as some of
its parts) cannot be used directly for routing through DNS, and
therefore the jurisdiction must adopt one of the following
strategies:
* to convert non-ASCII characters within the DNS into the IDN
encoding, using the [RFC5894] punycode translation (e.g.
mU+00FCnchen in xn--mnchen-3ya), and to develop an interface
software that converts the URN before the navigation in DNS, or
* to create a routing service relying on a software, out of DNS,
addressing a proper resolution service.
Note that the urn:lex ID, could contain groups of characters (UTF-8
%-encoded) of some languages with different orientations: in this
case the BiDi rules apply [RFC5893].
Summarizing, the preference order is the following:
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
* Conversion into basic ASCII, RECOMMENDED solution (for not having
to make conversions for network protocols and DNS);
* Using UNICODE, and connvert into UTF-8 %-encoding [RFC3629], for
accessing network protocols, and to punycode [RFC5894], only for
navigation in DNS, via software interface;
* Creation of a routing service relying on a software, out of DNS,
addressing a proper resolution service.
The first solution allows native DNS routing, while the other two
require software development for the interface or the routing.
However it is up to the specific jurisdiction to choose the preferred
solution.
Two examples (Latin and Cyrillic alphabet) relating to the different
solutions adopted are here reported:
a circular adopted by the Municipality of Munich (Rundschreiben der
Stadt MU+00FCnchen):
- ascii = urn:lex:de:stadt.munchen:rundschreiben:...
- unicode = urn:lex:de:stadt.mU+00FCnchen:rundschreiben:...
- utf-8 = urn:lex:de:stadt.m%xC3%xBCnchen:rundschreiben:...
- punycode = urn:lex:de:stadt.xn--mnchen-3ya:rundschreiben:...
a state law of the Russian Federation (latin: gosudarstvo zakon;
cyrillic: U+0441U+043EU+0441U+0442U+043EU+044FU+043DU+0438U+0435
U+0437U+0430U+043AU+043EU+043D):
- ascii = urn:lex:ru:gosudarstvo:zakon:...
- unicode = urn:lex:ru:U+0441U+043EU+0441U+0442U+043EU+044FU+043D
U+0438U+0435:U+0437U+0430U+043AU+043EU+043D:...
- utf-8 = urn:lex:ru:%xD1%x81%xD0%xBE%xD1%x81%xD1%x82%xD0%xBE%xD1
%x8F%xD0%xBD%xD0%xB8%xD0%xB5:%xD0%xB7%xD0%xB0%xD0%xBA
%xD0%xBE%xD0%xBD:...
- punycode = urn:lex:ru:xn--80aebe3cdmfdkg:xn--80ankme:...
assuming that the Russia jurisdiction-code is expressed
in ASCII ("ru"),
while the Cyrillic version ("U+0440U+0444") has the
puny-code "xn--p1ai".
3.5. Abbreviations
Abbreviations are often used in law for indicating institutions (e.g.
Min.), structures (e.g. Dept.), or legal measures (e.g. Reg.) but
not in a uniform way, therefore their expansion is highly
RECOMMENDED. (e.g., "Min." is reported as "ministry")
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
3.6. Date Format
The [ISO.8601.1988] is the international format for representing
dates: therefore dates MUST always be represented in this format (4
digits for the year, 2 digits for the month, 2 digits for the day):
date-iso = yyyy-mm-dd
(e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written as "1999-09-02").
This format ensures interoperability between different representation
systems and there are several programs for mapping other formats to
this one.
However, to make reading and understanding such other formats (e.g.
Jewish calendar), the urn:lex scheme provides that the date can be
added in the jurisdiction's own format
(e.g. the date in the previous example would be 21.Elul,5759, that
is:
- in Hebrew characters:
"U+05DBU+05F4U+05D0.U+05D0U+05B1U+05DCU+05D5U+05BCU+05DC.U+05EA
U+05E9U+05E0U+05F4U+05D8";
- in UTF-8 code:
"%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x44%x42%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x46%x34%x5c%x75%x30%x35
%x44%x30%x2e%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x44%x30%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x42%x31%x5c
%x75%x30%x35%x44%x43%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x44%x35%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x42
%x43%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x44%x43%x2e%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x45%x41%x5c%x75
%x30%x35%x45%x39%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x45%x30%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x46%x34
%x5c%x75%x30%x35%x44%x38").
Therefore, for all the dates in the urn:lex identifier (see
Section 6.3 and Section 7.1.2), it is also possible to indicate the
one in the local format:
date = date-iso [ "|" date-loc ]
(e.g., "September 2, 99" will be written in ISO plus Hebrew format as
"1999-09-02|U+05DBU+05F4U+05D0.U+05D0U+05B1U+05DCU+05D5U+05BCU+05DC.
U+05EAU+05E9U+05E0U+05F4U+05D8").
The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved
(e.g. ",") cannot exist inside the date-loc and therefore MUST be
turned into ".".
4. Specific Syntax and Features of the LEX Identifier
In this section there are other features related to specific
jurisdictions and the implementation of which is RECOMMENDED.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
4.1. Spaces, Connectives and Punctuation Marks
All the language connectives (e.g., articles, prepositions, etc.),
the punctuation marks and all the special characters (as apostrophes,
dashes, etc.), when explicitly present, are eliminated (no
transformation occurs in cases of languages with declensions or
agglutinating languages). The words left are connected to each other
by a dot (".") which substitutes the "space".
(e.g., "Ministry of Finances, Budget and of Economic Planning"
becomes "ministry.finances.budget.economic.planning";
"Ministerstvo Finansov" becomes "ministerstvo.finansov")
4.2. Acronyms
The use of acronyms might be confusing and encourage ambiguity in
uniform names (the same acronym may indicate two different
institutions or structures), therefore their expansion is highly
RECOMMENDED.
(e.g., "FAO" is expanded as "food.agriculture.organization")
4.3. Ordinal Numbers
To even the representation, it is highly RECOMMENDED that any ordinal
number included in a component of a document name (e.g., in the
description of an institution body) is indicated in Western Arabic
numerals, regardless to the original expression: whether in Roman
numerals, or with an adjective, or in Arabic numeral with apex, etc.
(IV, third, 1U+00B0, 2^, etc.).
(e.g., "Department IV" becomes "department.4")
5. Creation of the Source of Law LEX Identifier - Baseline structure
5.1. Basic Principles
The uniform name must identify one and only one document (more
precisely a "bibliographic resource" [ISBD], see also Section 5.2)
and is created in such a way that it is:
* self-explanatory ;
* identifiable through simple and clear rules;
* compatible with the practice commonly used for references;
* able to be created from references in the text, automatically (by
parser) or manually;
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
* representative of both the formal and the substantive aspects of
the document.
5.2. Model of Sources of Law Representation
According to the [FRBR] (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
Records) model developed by IFLA (International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions), in a source of law, as in any
intellectual production, four fundamental entities (or aspects) can
be specified.
The first two entities reflect its contents:
* work: identifies a distinct intellectual creation; in our case, it
identifies a source of law both in its original form as amended
over time;
* expression: identifies a specific intellectual realisation of a
work; in our case it identifies every different (original or up-
to- date) version of the source of law over time and/or language
in which the text is expressed.
The other two entities relate to its form:
* manifestation: identifies a physical embodiment of an expression
of a work; in our case it identifies embodiments in different
media (printing, digital, etc.), encoding formats (XML, PDF,
etc.), or other publishing characteristics;
* item: identifies a specific copy of a manifestation; in our case
it identifies individual physical copies as they are found in
particular physical locations.
In this document the [FRBR] model has been interpreted for the
specific characteristics of the legal domain. In particular, apart
from the language that does produce a specific expression, the
discriminative criterion between expression and manifestation is
based on the difference of the juridical effects that a variation can
provide with respect to the involved actors (citizens, parties,
institutions). In this scenario the main characteristic of the
expression of an act is represented by its validity over the time,
during which it provides the same juridical effects. These effects
may change as a result of amendments or annulments of other
legislative or jurisprudential acts. Therefore notes,
summarizations, comments, anonymizations and other editorial
activities over the same text do not produce different expressions,
but different manifestations.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
5.3. The Structure of the Local Name
The local-name within the "lex" namespace MUST contain all the
necessary pieces of information enabling the unequivocal
identification of a legal document. If the local-name violates this
requirement, the related URN is not a valid one within the "lex"
namespace.
In the legal domain, at "work" level, three components are always
present: the enacting authority, the type of provision and the
details. A fourth component, the annex, can be added if any. It is
often necessary to differentiate various expressions, that is:
* the original version and all the amended versions of the same
document;
* the versions of the text expressed in the different official
languages of the state or organization.
Finally the uniform name allows a distinction among diverse
manifestations, which may be produced by multiple publishers using
different means and formats.
In every case, the basic identifier of the source of law (work)
remains the same, but information is added regarding the specific
version under consideration (expression); similarly a suffix is added
to the expression for representing the characteristics of the
publication (manifestation).
Information that forms a source of law uniform name at each level
(work, expression, manifestation) is expressed in the official
language of the relevant jurisdiction; in case of multiple official
languages (as in Switzerland) or more involved jurisdictions (as in
international treaties), more language-dependent names (aliases) are
created.
Therefore, the more general structure of the local name appears as
follows:
local-name = work ["@" expression] ["$" manifestation]
However, consistent with legislative practice, the uniform name of
the main original provision (work) becomes the identifier of an
entire class of documents which includes: the original main document,
the annexes, and all their versions, languages and formats
subsequently generated.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
5.4. Structure of the Document Identifier at "Work" Level
The structure of the document identifier is comprised of the four
fundamental elements mentioned above, distinguished one from the
other ordered by increasingly narrow domains and competencies:
work = authority ":" measure ":" details *(":" annex)
where:
* authority is the issuing or proposing authority of the measure
(e.g., State, Ministry, Municipality, Court, etc.);
* measure is the type of the measure, both public nature (e.g.,
constitution, act, treaty, regulation, decree, decision, etc.) as
well as private one (e.g., license, agreement, etc);
* details are the terms associated to the measure, typically the
date (usually the signature date) and the number included in the
heading of the act;
* annex is the identifier of the annex, if any (e.g., Annex 1).
In case of annexes, both the main document and its annexes have their
own uniform name so that they can individually be referenced; the
identifier of the annex adds a suffix to that of the main document.
In similar way the identifier of an annex of an annex adds an ending
to that of the annex which it is attached to.
The main elements of the work name are generally divided into several
elementary components, and for each component, specific rules of
representation are established (criteria, modalities, syntax and
order). For the details regarding each element, please see the
Section 6. Examples (hypothetical) of work identifiers are:
urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2006-05-14;22
urn:lex:uk:ministry.justice:decree:1999-10-07;45
urn:lex:ch;glarus:regiere:erlass:2007-10-15;963
urn:lex:es:tribunal.supremo:decision:2001-09-28;68
urn:lex:fr:assemblee.nationale:proposition.loi:13.legislature;1762
urn:lex:br:estado:constituicao:1988-10-05;lex-1
urn:lex:un.org:united.nations;general.assembly:resolution:
1961-11-28;a-res-1661
urn:lex:nl:hoge.raad:besluit:2008-04-01;bc8581
The type of measure is important to identify case law, as well as
legislation, especially within the legal systems where cases are
identified traditionally only through the year of release and a
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
number. Since the aim of the lex schema is to identify specific
materials, the type of measure or the full date are able to
differentiate between materials belonging to a specific case.
Here below is an example where the type of measure or the full date
are essential for identify specific materials of a case:
- 4/59 Judgment of the EEC Court of Justice 04/04/1960, Mannesmann
AG and others / ECSC High Authority
urn:lex:eec.lex.arpa:court.justice:judgement:1960-04-04;4-59
- 4/59 Order of the EEC Court of Justice 18/05/1960, Mannesmann AG
and others / ECSC High Authority
urn:lex:eec.lex.arpa:court.justice:order:1960-05-18;4-59
5.5. Aliases
International treaties involve multiple signatory jurisdictions, and
are therefore represented through multiple identifiers, each of them
related to a signatory. For example, a bilateral France and Germany
treaty is identified through two URNs (aliases) belonging to either
"fr" or "de" jurisdiction
(e.g., "urn:lex:fr:etat:traite:..." and
"urn:lex:de:staat:vertrag:...") since it pertains to both the French
and the German jurisdiction.
In the states or organisations that have multiple official languages,
a document has multiple identifiers, each of them expressed in a
different official language, basically a set of equivalent aliases.
This system permits manual or automated construction of the uniform
name of the referred source of law in the same language used in the
document itself.
(e.g., "urn:lex:eu:council:directive:2004-12-07;31",
"urn:lex:eu:consiglio:direttiva:2004-12-07;31", etc.)
Moreover, a document can be assigned more than one uniform name in
order to facilitate its linking from other documents. This option
can be used for documents that, although unique, are commonly
referenced from different perspectives. For example, the form of a
document's promulgation and its specific content (e.g., a Regulation
promulgated through a Decree of the President of the Republic).
5.6. Structure of the Document Identifier at "Expression" Level
There may be several expressions of a legal text, connected to
specific versions or languages.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 23]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Each version is characterized by the period of time during which that
text is to be considered to be in force or effective. The lifetime
of a version ends with the issuing of the subsequent version. New
versions of a text may be brought into existence by:
* amendments due to the issuing of other legal acts and to the
subsequent production of updated or consolidated texts;
* correction of publication errors (rectification or errata
corrige);
* entry into or departure from a particular time span, depending on
the specific date in which different partitions of a text come
into force.
Each such version may be expressed in more than one language, with
each language-version having its own specific identifier. The
identifier of a source of law expression adds such information to the
work identifier, using the following main structure:
expression = version [":" language]
where:
* version is the identifier of the version of the original or
amended source of law. In general it is expressed by the
promulgation date of the amending act; other specific information
can be used for particular documents. If necessary, the original
version is specified by the string "original", expressed in the
language of the act or version (for the details regarding this
element, please see the Section 7);
* language is the identification code of the language in which the
document is expressed, according to [RFC5646] (it=Italian,
fr=French, de=German, etc.). The granularity level of the
language (for example the specification of the German language as
used in Switzerland rather than the standard German) is left to
each specific jurisdiction. The information is not necessary when
the text is expressed in the sole official language of the country
or jurisdiction.
Hypothetical examples of document identifiers for expressions are:
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 24]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@originel:fr
(original version in French)
urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@original:de
(original version in German)
urn:lex:ch:etat:loi:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:fr
(amended version in French)
urn:lex:ch:staat:gesetz:2006-05-14;22@2008-03-12:de
(amended version in German)
urn:lex:be:conseil.etat:decision:2008-07-09;185.273@originel:fr
(original version in French of a Belgian decision)
5.7. Structure of the Document Identifier at "Manifestation" Level
To identify a specific manifestation, the uniform name of the
expression is followed by a suitable suffix containing the following
main elements:
* editor: editorial staff who produced it, expressed according to
its Internet domain name. Since publishers' domain names may vary
over time, manifestations already assigned by a publisher remain
unchanged even if the identified object is no longer accessible.
In this case, in order to make its materials accessible, the
publisher will have to create for each of them a new manifestation
with the new domain name;
* format: the digital format (e.g., XML, HTML, PDF, etc.) expressed
according to the MIME Content-Type standard [RFC2045], where the
"/" character is to be substituted by the "-" sign;
* component: possible components of the expressions contained in the
manifestation. Such components are expressed by language-
dependent labels representing the whole document (in English
"all") or the main part of the document (in English "body") or the
caption label of the component itself (e.g. Table 1, Figure 2,
etc.);
* feature: other features of the document (e.g., anonymized decision
text).
The manifestation suffix thus reads:
manifestation = editor ":" format
[":" component [":" feature]]
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 25]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
To indicate possible features or peculiarities, each main element of
the manifestation MAY be followed by further specifications
(separated by ";"), for example as regards editor the archive name
and the electronic publisher, for format the version, etc. Therefore
the main elements of the manifestation will assume the forms:
editor = publisher *(";" specification)
format = mime *(";" specification)
component = part *(";" specification)
feature = attribute *(";" specification)
The syntax details of the manifestation element is shown in
Section 8, in the related part.
(examples (hypothetical):
the original version of the Italian act 3 April 2000, n. 56 might
have the following manifestations with their relative uniform names:
- PDF format (vers. 1.7) of the whole act edited by the Italian
Parliament:
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-pdf;
1.7:parlamento.it"
- XML format (version 2.2 DTD NIR) of the text of the act and PDF
format (version 1.7) of the "Figura 1" (figure 1) contained in the
body, edited by the Italian Senate:
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$text-xml;dtd-nir-2.2:
senato.it:testo"
"urn:lex:it:stato:legge:2000-04-03;56$application-pdf;1.7:
senato.it:figura.1"
the Spanish URN of the html format of the whole Judgment of the
European Court of Justice n. 33/08 of 11/06/2009, in Spanish version,
published in the Jurifast database in anonymized form:
"urn:lex:eu:tribunal.justicia:sentencia:2009-06-11;33-08
@original:es$text-html:juradmin.eu;jurifast:todo:anonimo")
It is useful to be able to assign a uniform name to a manifestation
(or to a part of it) in case non-textual objects are involved. These
may be multimedia objects that are non-textual in their own right
(e.g. geographic maps, photographs, etc.), or texts recorded in non-
textual formats, such as image scans of documents.
5.8. Sources of Law References
References to sources of law often refer to specific partitions of
the act (article, paragraph, etc.) and not to the entire document.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 26]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
From a legal point of view, a partition is always a text block, that
represents a logical subdivision of an act.
As regards the digital representation, a partition is represented by
an element (a block of text) with its own ID; this ID aims to
identify the related element and to locate it. In this case,
therefore, it is possible either to extract or to point to a
partition.
In a mark-up not fitting the logical structure of the text (as HTML),
generally only the starting point of the partition, rather than the
whole block of text or element, is identified through a label (a <a
id=partitionID></a> tag in Html Markup Language [W3C.HTML]). In this
case therefore it is not possible to extract a partition but only to
point to it.
Partitions should be assigned unique labels or IDs within the
including document and their value should be the same regardless of
document format.
For enabling the construction of the partition identifier between
different collections of documents, specific construction rules for
IDs or labels will be defined and shared, within each country or
jurisdiction, for any document type
(e.g., for legislation, the paragraph 2 of the article 3 might have
as label or ID the value "art3;par2", similarly for case-law,
paragraph 22 of the judgment in Case 46/76 Bauhuis v Netherlands,
might have as label or ID the value "par22").
Furthermore, it is useful to foresee the compatibility with
applications able to manage this information (e.g., returning the
proper element); these procedures are particularly useful in the case
of rather long acts, such as codes, constitutions, regulations, etc.
For this purpose it is necessary that the partition identifier is
transmitted to the servers (resolution and application) and therefore
it cannot be separated by the typical "#" character of URI fragment,
which is not transmitted to the server.
According to these requirements, the syntax of a reference is:
URN-reference = URN-document ["~" partition-id]
(e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French
Act of 15 May 2004, n. 106, the reference can be
"urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15;par3").
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 27]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the
partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to
the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for
example, out of a database) only the referred partition, if the
partition syntax is compatible with the media type used, otherwise to
return the whole act.
When resolving to HTTP, the resolver SHALL transform the partition ID
to an appropriate internal reference (#) in the page, or at the
beginning if that point cannot be found. The transformation in URI
fragment is obtained appending to the URL the "#" character followed
by the partition ID (in the example above, the returned URL will be
<URL-document>#art15;par3). Doing this, knowing the granularity of
the act markup, the resolver could exploit the hierarchical structure
of the ID, eliminating sub- partitions not addressed. If only the
article was identified in the act, in the previous example it could
return <URL-document>#art15 only.
It is possible to use the general syntax (with "#"); in this case
only the URN document component of the reference is transmitted to
the resolver, therefore the whole document will be always retrieved.
6. Specific Syntax of the Identifier at "Work" Level
6.1. The authority Element
6.1.1. Indication of the Authority
The authority element of a uniform name may indicate, in the various
cases:
* the actual authority issuing the legal provision. More
specifically, the authority adopting the provision or enacting it;
* the institution where the provision is registered, known and
referenced to, even if produced by others (e.g., the bills
identified through the reference to the Chamber where they are
presented);
* the institution regulated (and referred to in citations) by the
legal provision even when this is issued by another authority
(e.g., the statute of a Body);
* the entity that proposed the legal material not yet included in
the institutional process (e.g. a proposed bill written by a a
political party).
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 28]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
6.1.2. Multiple Issuers
Some sources of law are enacted by a number of issuing parties (e.g.,
inter-ministerial decrees, agreements, etc.). In this case, the
authority element contains all the issuing parties (properly
separated), as follows:
authority = issuer *("+" issuer)
(e.g., "ministry.justice+ministry.finances")
6.1.3. Indication of the Issuer
Each issuing authority is essentially represented by either an
institutional office (e.g., Prime Minister) or an institution (e.g.,
Ministry); in the last case, the authority is indicated in accordance
with the institution's hierarchical structure, from the more general
to more specific (Council, Department, etc.), ending with the
relative office (President, Director, etc.). Therefore, the
structure of the issuer is as follows:
issuer = (institution *(";" body-function)) / office
(e.g., "ministry.finances;department.revenues;manager")
6.1.4. Indication of the Body
Depending on the kind of measure, the body within the issuing
authority is unambiguously determined (e.g., the Council for Regional
Acts) and normally it is not indicated in the references. Just like
in practice, the indication of the enacting authority is limited to
the minimum in relation to the type of measure.
(e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany;council:act")
6.1.5. Indication of the Function
Generally, the function is indicated, sometimes instead of the body
itself:
* in case of political, representative or elective offices
(e.g., "university.oxford;rector:decree" instead of
"university.oxford;rectorship:decree");
* when it refers to a top officer in the institution (e.g., general
manager, general secretary, etc.) which is not always possible to
associate a specific internal institutional structure to
(e.g., "national.council.research;general.manager").
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 29]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
It is not indicated when it clearly corresponds to the person in
charge of an institution (typically, a general director); in this
case, only the structure and not the person in charge is indicated
(e.g., "ministry.justice;department.penitentiary.administration").
The function MUST be indicated when:
* it is not the same of the director or the person in charge of the
structure (for example, in case of an undersecretary, a deputy
director, etc.);
* the type of measure may be both monocratic or collegial: the
indication of the office eliminates the ambiguity.
6.1.6. Conventions for the Authority
Acts and measures bearing the same relevance as an act, issued or
enacted since the foundation of the State, have conventionally
indicated "state" (expressed in each country official language) as
authority; the same convention is used for constitutions, codes
(civil, criminal, civil procedure, criminal procedure, etc) and
international treaties.
6.2. The measure Element
6.2.1. Criteria for the Indication of the Type of Measure
In uniform names the issuing authority of a document is mandatory.
This makes unnecessary to indicate any further qualification of the
measure (e.g., ministerial decree, directorial ordinance, etc.), even
if it is widely used. When the authority-measure combination clearly
identifies a specific document, the type of measure is not defined
through attributes referring to the enacting authority.
(e.g., "region.tuscany:act" and not "region.tuscany:regional.act")
6.2.2. Further Specification to the Type of Measure
In the measure element, it is usually sufficient to indicate the type
of a measure. As usual, references to sources of law, rather than
through the formal details (date and number), may be made through
some of their characteristics such as the subject-matter covered
(e.g., accounting regulations), nicknames referring to the promoter
(e.g., Bassanini Act) or to the topic of the act (e.g., Bankruptcy
Law), etc.. In these cases, the type of measure MAY be followed by
further specifications useful in referencing even if the details are
lacking:
measure = measure-type *(";" specification)
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 30]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
(e.g., "regulations;accounting" or "act;bankruptcy")
6.2.3. Aliases for Sources of Law with Different Normative References
There are legislative measures that, although unique, are usually
cited in different ways, for example through the legislative act
introducing them into the legal order (President's decree,
legislative decree, etc.) or through their legislative category
(regulations, consolidation, etc.). In order to ensure, in all the
cases, the validity of the references, an alias (additional URN LEX
identifier), that takes into account the measure category, is added
to what represents the legislative form of the same act.
(e.g., "state:decree.legislative:1992-07-24;358" and
"state:consolidation;public.contracts:1992-07-24;358").
6.2.4. Relations between Measure and Authority in the Aliases
The sources of law including different normative references are
usually introduced in legislation through the adoption or the issuing
of an act, which they are either included or attached to. It is,
therefore, necessary to create an alias linking the two aspects of
the same document. Specifically, the different measures can be:
* adopted/issued by an authority different from the one regulated by
the provision (e.g., the statute of a Body); in this case, the
correlation is established between two uniform names each
featuring a completely different authority element
(e.g., "italian.society.authors.publishers:statute" and
"ministry.cultural.activities+ministry.finances.budget.economic.
planning:decree");
* issued by the institution itself either because it has issuing
authority or by virtue of a proxy (e.g., a provision that refers
to the functioning of the Body itself); in this case, the two
aliases share the first part of the authority;
(e.g., "municipality.firenze:statute" and
"municipality.firenze;council:deliberation");
* issued by the same Body to regulate a particular sector of its own
competence; in this case the authority element is the same
(e.g., "ministry.justice:regulation;use.information.tools.
telematic.process" and "ministry.justice:decree").
6.3. The Details Element
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 31]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
6.3.1. Indication of the Details
The details of a source of law usually include the date of the
enactment and the identification number (inclusion in the body of
laws, register, protocol, etc.).
Some measures can have multiple dates; there are also cases in which
the number of the measure does not exist (unnumbered measures) or a
measure has multiple numbers (e.g., unified cases). For these
reasons, the set up of both elements (date and number) includes
multiple values.
Some institutions (e.g., the Parliaments) usually identify documents
through their period of reference (e.g., the legislature number)
rather than through a date, which would be much less meaningful and
never used in references (e.g., Senate bill S.2544 of the XIV
legislature). In these cases, the component period is used in
substitution of the component dates.
Usually details of a measure are not reported according to a specific
sequence; in accordance with the global structure of the uniform
name, which goes from the general to the specific, the sequence date-
number has the following form:
details = (dates / period) ";" numbers
(e.g., "2000-12-06;126", "14.legislature;s.2544")
6.3.2. Multiple Dates
Some sources of law, even if unique, are identified by more than one
date; in this case, in the field dates all the given dates are to be
reported and indicated as follows:
dates = date *("," date)
(e.g., the measure of the Data Protection Authority of December 30,
1999- January 13, 2000, No. 1/P/2000 has the following uniform name:
"personal.data.protection.authority:measure:1999-12-30,2000-01-13;
1-p-2000").
As specified in Section 3.6, all the dates can have, in addition to
the ISO format, also the date typical of the jurisdiction.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 32]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
6.3.3. Unnumbered Measures
Measures not officially numbered in the publications may have a non-
unequivocal identifier, because several measures of the same type can
exist, issued on the same day by the same authority. To ensure that
the uniform name is unambiguous, the numbers field MUST, in any case,
contain a discriminating element, which can be any identifier used
internally, and not published, by the authority (e.g., protocol).
If the authority does not have its own identifier, one identifier
MUST be created for the name system. In order to easily
differentiate it, such number is preceded by the string "lex-":
number-lex = "lex-" 1*DIGIT
(e.g., "ministry.finances:decree:1999-12-20;lex-3")
It is responsibility of the authority issuing a document to assign a
discriminating specification to it; in case of multiple authorities,
only one of them is responsible for the assignment of the number to
the document (e.g., the proponent).
The unnumbered measures published on an official publication (e.g.,
the Official Gazette), instead of by a progressive number are
recognized by the univocal identifying label printed on the paper.
Such an identifier, even if unofficial but assigned to a document in
an official publication, is to be preferred because it has the clear
advantage to be public and therefore easier to be found.
6.3.4. Multiple Numbers
Some legal documents (e.g., bills), even if unique, are identified by
a set of numbers (e.g., the unification of cases or bills). In this
case, in the numbers field, all the identifiers are reported,
according to the following structure:
numbers = document-id *("," document-id)
(e.g., "2000-06-12;c-10-97,c-11-97,c-12-97")
The characters which are not allowed (e.g., "/") or reserved (e.g.,
":"), including the comma, cannot exist inside the document-id, and
therefore MUST be turned into "-".
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 33]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Where special characters contained in the number of the act are
distinctive of the act itself (e.g. bill n. 123-bis (removal of 123)
and n. 123/bis (return of 123)) and would disappear with the
conversion to "-", a further ending must be added, allowing to
distinguish the acts (e.g. bill n.123-bis-removal and 123-bis-
return).
6.4. The annex Element
6.4.1. Formal Annexes
Although annexes are an integral part of the legal document, they may
be referred to and undergo amendments separately from the act to
which they are annexed. It is, therefore, necessary that both the
main document as well as each formal individual annex is
unequivocally identified.
Formal annexes may be registered as separate parts or together with a
legal provision; they may also be autonomous in nature or not. In
any case, they MUST be given a uniform name, which includes the
uniform name of the source of law to which they are attached, and a
suffix which identifies the annex itself.
The suffix of formal annexes includes the official heading of the
annex and, possibly, further specifications (e.g., the title) which
will facilitate the retrieval of the annex in case the identifier is
missing:
annex = annex-id *(";" specification)
(e.g., "region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;
borders.park")
The characters which are not allowed (e.g. "/") or which are reserved
(e.g. ":") must not be featured in the annex-id and therefore MUST be
turned into ".".
6.4.2. Annexes of Annexes
When there are annexes to an annex, their corresponding identifiers
are created by adding to the identifier of the original annex those
of the annexes that are connected with it (that is, attached to it).
(e.g., Table 1 attached to the Annex A of the preceding legal act has
the following uniform name:
"region.sicily;council:deliberation:1998-02-12;14:annex.a;
borders.park:table.1;municipality.territories").
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 34]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
7. Specific Syntax of the Version Element of the "Expression"
7.1. The version Element
7.1.1. Different Versions of a Legislative Document
The creation of an updated text of a document may have one of the
following forms:
* "multi-version": when specific mark-ups which identify the
modified parts of a document (added, substituted or deleted parts)
and their related periods of effectiveness are indicated inside
one single object (e.g., an xml file). Such a document will be
able, in a dynamic way, to appear in different forms according to
the requested date of effectiveness. In this document type,
usually a set of metadata contains the lifecycle of the document
(from the original to the last modification), including the
validity time interval of each version and of each related text
portion;
* "single-version": when, on the contrary, a new and distinct object
is created for each amendment to the text at a given time. Each
object is, therefore, characterized by its own period of validity.
In any case all the versions SHOULD be linked one another and
immediately navigable.
In a "multi-version" document each time interval should have a link
to the related in-force document version which can be therefore
displayed. In a "single-version" document, the metadata should
contain links to the all the previous modifications and a link only
to the following version, if any.
[RFC8288] can be used as reference to establish links between
different document versions, either in the "multi-version" or in the
"single-version" document. According to [RFC8288] the following
relations are useful:
* current (or last or last-version): in-force version
* self: this version
* next: next version
* previous: previous version
* first: original version
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 35]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
It is RECOMMENDED that these relations are inserted in the header of
each version (if "single-version") or associated to each entry
containing a single URN (if "multi-version").
7.1.2. Identification of the Version
In order to identify the different time versions of the same act, to
the uniform name of the original document has to be added a specific
suffix.
Such a suffix identifies each version of a legal provision and
includes, first and foremost, one of the following elements:
* the issuing date of the last amending measure taken into account;
* the date in which the communication of the rectification or of the
errata corrige, is published;
* a specification which must identify the reason concerning the
amendment (e.g., the specific phase of the legislative process),
for the cases in which the date is not usually used (e.g., bills).
It is possible to add further specifications that will distinguish
each of the different versions of the text to guarantee identifier
unequivocalness. For example with regard to changes of the in-force
or effectiveness of any partition or portion of the text itself
(e.g., when the amendments introduced by an act are applied at
different times) or different events occurring on the same date.
version = (amendment-date / specification)
*(";" (event-date / event))
where:
* amendment-date contains the issuing date of the last considered
amendment or of the last communication of amendment. In case the
original text introduces differentiated periods in which an act is
effective and the information system produces one version for each
of them, such element contains the string "original" expressed in
the language of the act or version;
* specification any information useful to identify unambiguously and
univocally the version;
* event-date contains the date in which a version is put into force,
is effective or is published;
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 36]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
* event is a name assigned to the event producing a further version
(e.g., amendment, decision, etc.).
The issuing date of an amending act was chosen as identifier of a
version because it can be obtained from the heading (formal data).
(e.g., the name "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19"
identifies the updated text of the "Royal Decree of 30/1/1941, No.
12" with the amendments introduced by the "Law Decree of 19/2/1998,
No. 51", without any indication of its actual entry into force.
The same uniform name with the additional ending ";1999-01-01"
indicates the in-force or effective version starting in a different
date (from 1/1/99).
For a full compatibility, every updating of a text or of the
effectiveness of a "multi-version" document implies the creation of a
new uniform name, even if the object remains only one, containing the
identifier of the virtually generated version, exactly as in the case
of a "single-version" document. A specific meta-data will associate
every uniform name with the period of time during which such a name
together with its corresponding text is to be considered valid.
(e.g., the multi-version document containing the "R.D. of 01/30/1941,
no. 12", updated by the amendments introduced by the "D.Lgs. of
02/19/1998, no. 51", contains the name of the original
"state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12" as well as the name of the updated
version "state:royal.decree:1941-01-30;12@1998-02-19").
Please note that in case of attachments or annexes, the creation of a
new version (even in the case of only one component) would imply the
creation of a new uniform name for all the connected objects in order
to guarantee their alignment (i.e., the main document, the
attachments and annexes).
As specified in Section 3.6, all the dates can have, in addition to
the ISO format, also the date typical of the jurisdiction.
8. Summary of the Syntax of the Uniform Names of the "lex" Namespace
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of a Uniform Resource Name (URN) of the "lex" namespace
; - NID-lex = namespace
; - NSS-lex = specific name
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
URN-lex = "urn:" NID-lex ":" NSS-lex
NID-lex = "lex"
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 37]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of a "lex" specific name
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
NSS-lex = jurisdiction ":" local-name
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the jurisdiction element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
jurisdiction = jurisdiction-code *(";" jurisdiction-unit)
jurisdiction-code = 2*alf-dot
jurisdiction-unit = alf-dot
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the local-name element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
local-name = work ["@" expression] ["$" manifestation]
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the work element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
work = authority ":" measure ":" details *(":" annex)
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the authority element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
authority = issuer *("+" issuer)
issuer = (institution *(";" body-function)) / office
institution = alf-dot
body-function = alf-dot
office = alf-dot
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the measure element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 38]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
measure = measure-type *(";" specification)
measure-type = alf-dot
specification = alf-dot
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the details element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
details = (dates / period) ";" numbers
dates = date *("," date)
period = alf-dot
numbers = (document-id *("," document-id)) / number-lex
document-id = alf-dot-oth
number-lex = "lex-" 1*DIGIT
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the annex element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
annex = annex-id *(";" specification)
annex-id = alf-dot
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the expression element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
expression = version [":" language]
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the version element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
version = (amendment-date / specification)
*(";" (event-date / event))
amendment-date = date
event-date = date
event = alf-dot
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 39]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the language element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
language = 2*3alfa *["-" extlang] / 4*8alfa
extlang = 3alfa *2("-" 3alfa)
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the manifestation element
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
manifestation = format ":" editor
[":" component [":" feature]]
format = mime *(";" specification)
mime = alf-dot-hyp
editor = publisher *(";" specification)
publisher = alf-dot-hyp
component = part *(";" specification)
part = alf-dot-hyp
feature = attribute *(";" specification)
attribute = alf-dot-hyp
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Structure of the date
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
date = date-iso ["|" date-loc]
date-iso = year "-" month "-" day
year = 4DIGIT
month = 2DIGIT
day = 2DIGIT
date-loc = *(alfadot / other)
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
; Allowed, reserved and future characters
;-------------------------------------------------------------------
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 40]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
; - allowed = alfadot / other / reserved
; - reserved = ":" / "@" / "$" / "+" / "|" / ";" / "," / "~"
; - future = "*" / "!"
alf-dot = alfanum *alfadot
alf-dot-hyp = alfanum *(alfadot / "-")
alf-dot-oth = alfanum *(alfadot / other)
alfadot = alfanum / "."
alfa = lowercase / uppercase
alfanum = alfa / DIGIT / encoded
lowercase = %x61-7A ; lower-case ASCII letters (a-z)
uppercase = %x41-5A ; upper-case ASCII letters (A-Z)
DIGIT = %x30-39 ; decimal digits (0-9)
encoded = "%" 2HEXDIG
HEXDIG = DIGIT / %x41-46 / %x61-66 ; hex digits (0-9,A-F,a-f)
other = "-" / "_" / "'" / "=" / "(" / ")"
9. The Procedure of Uniform Names Assignment
9.1. Specifying the jurisdiction Element of the LEX Identifier
Under the "lex" namespace, each country or international organization
is assigned with a jurisdiction code, which characterizes the URNs of
the source of law of that country or jurisdiction. This code is
assigned according to ccTLD (as well as TLDN (Top Level Domain Name)
or DN (Domain Name) for the organizations) representation and it is
the value of the jurisdiction-code element, which preserves cross-
country uniqueness of the identifiers.
9.2. Jurisdictional Registrar for Names Assignment
Any country or jurisdiction, who intends to adopt this schema, MUST
identify a Jurisdictional Registrar, an organization which shares and
defines the structure of the optional part (jurisdiction-unit) of the
name, according to the organization of the state or institution (for
details see Section 2.2). It must appoint a Jurisdictional Registrar
and inform the Designed Experts, together with the registration of a
jurisdiction code. For example, in a federal state a jurisdiction-
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 41]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
unit corresponding to the name of each member state
(e.g. "br;sao.paulo", "br;minas.gerais", etc.) may be defined.
The process of assigning the local-name is managed by each specific
country or jurisdiction under the related jurisdiction element.
In any country the Jurisdictional Registrar shares and defines the
assignment of the primary elements (issuing authority and type of
legal measure) of the local names considering the characteristics of
its own state or institution organization.
Such a Registrar MUST establish, according to the guidelines
indicated in this document, a uniform procedure within the country or
organization to define local-name elements, to take decisions upon
normalizations and finally to solve and avoid possible name
collisions as well as to maintain authoritative registries of various
kinds (e.g., for authorities, types of measures, etc.). In
particular, accurate point-in-time representations of the structure
and naming of government entities are important to semantically-aware
applications in this domain.
Moreover, the Registrar shares and defines the rules to construct
partition IDs for each document type, possibly in accordance with
those already defined in other jurisdictions.
Finally, the Registrar will develop and publish the rules and the
guidelines for the local-name construction as well as the predefined
values and codes. The Registrar should also promote the urn:lex
identifier for the sources of law of its jurisdiction.
Such a set of rules will have to be followed by all institutional
bodies adopting the URN LEX identification system in a country or
jurisdiction, as well as by private publishers, and each of them will
be responsible for assigning names to their domains.
9.3. Identifier Uniqueness
Identifiers in the "lex" namespace are defined through a jurisdiction
element assigned to the sources of law of a specific country or
organization, and a local-name assigned by the issuing authority, in
conformance with the syntax defined in Section 5. The main elements
(authority and type of measure) of the local-name are defined by the
Jurisdictional Registrar, so that it is ensured that the constructed
URNs are unique. The Jurisdictional Registrar MUST provide clear
documentation of rules by which names are to be constructed, and MUST
update and make accessible its registries.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 42]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Any enacting authority is responsible to define formal parameters to
guarantee local name uniqueness by attributing, if necessary, a
conventional internal number, which, combined with the other local-
name components (authority, measure and date), builds a unique
identifier. Uniqueness is achieved by checking against the catalogue
of previously assigned names.
9.4. Identifier Persistence Considerations
The persistence of identifiers depends on the durability of the
institutions that assign and administer them. The goal of the LEX
schema is to maintain uniqueness and persistence of all resources
identified by the assigned URNs.
In particular, the CNR, as proposer, is responsible of maintaining
the uniqueness of the jurisdiction element; given that the
jurisdiction is assigned on the basis of the long-held ccTLD
representation of the country (or the TLDN or DN of the organization)
and that the country or organization associated code is expected to
continue indefinitely, the URN also persists indefinitely.
The rules for the construction of the name are conceived to delegate
the responsibility of their uniqueness to a set of authorities which
is identified within each country or organization.
Therefore, each authority is responsible for assigning URNs which
have a very long life expectancy and can be expected to remain unique
for the foreseeable future. Practical and political considerations,
as well as diverse local forms of government organization, will
result in different methods of assigning responsibility for different
levels of the name.
Where this cannot be accomplished by the implementation of an
authoritative hierarchy, it is highly desirable that it be done by
creating consensus around a series of published rules for the
creation and administration of names by institutions and bodies that
operate by means of collaboration rather than compulsion.
Issuing authorities that operate in more localized scopes, ranging
from the national down to the very local, MUST equally take
responsibility for the persistence of identifiers within their scope.
10. Recommendations for the Resolution Process
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 43]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
10.1. The General Architecture of the System
The task of the resolution service is that of associating a LEX
identifier with a specific document address on the network. By
contrast with systems that can be constructed around rigorous and
enforceable engineering premises, such as DNS, the "lex" namespace
resolver will be expected to cope with a wide variety of inputs
incomplete or partially incorrect, particularly those created by the
automated extraction of references from texts. In this document, the
result is a particular emphasis on a flexible and robust resolver
design.
The system has a distributed architecture based on two fundamental
components: a chain of information in DNS (Domain Name System) and a
series of resolution services from URNs to URLs, each competent
within a specific domain of the namespace.
The client retrieves the document associated with this URN using the
procedure described in [RFC3404], which starts with a DNS NAPTR
query.
A resolution service can delegate the resolution and management of
hierarchically-dependent portions of the name. Delegation of this
responsibility will not be unreasonably withheld provided that the
processes for their resolution and management are robust and are
followed.
For the "lex" namespace, CNR will maintain in the lex-nameserver (see
Section 12) the root zone of the chain resolution (equivalent to
"lex.urn.arpa", see [RFC3405]) and, in correspondence with the
adhesion (see Section 2.2) of a new country (e.g., "br") or
organization, will update the DNS information with a new record to
delegate the relative resolution. This may be obtained by a regular
expression that matches the initial part of the URN (e.g.,
"urn:lex:br") and redirects towards the proper zone (e.g.,
"lex.senado.gov.br").
Likewise the institution responsible for the jurisdiction uniform
names (e.g., "urn:lex:br") has the task of managing the relative root
in the DNS system (e.g., "lex.senado.gov.br" zone) and routing the
resolution towards its resolvers on the basis of parts of the uniform
names. In similar way it can delegate the resolution of country/
organization sub-levels (e.g., "urn:lex:br;sao.paolo") towards the
relative zone (e.g., "lex.sao-paolo.gov.br").
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 44]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
Such DNS routing chain does not work for all the URN components
containing %-encoded characters. Therefore, when converting a
lex:URN in UTF-8 code to a DNS query, clients MUST perform any
necessary punycode conversion [RFC5891] before sending the query.
The resolution service is made up of two elements: a knowledge base
(consisting in a catalogue or a set of transformation rules) and a
software to query the knowledge base itself.
10.2. Catalogues for Resolution
Incompleteness and inaccuracy are rather frequent in legal citations,
and incomplete or inaccurate uniform names of the referred document
are thus likely to be built from textual references (this is even
more frequent if they are created automatically through a specific
parser). For this reason, the implementation of a catalogue, based
on a relational-database, is suggested, as it will lead to a higher
flexibility in the resolution process.
In addition the catalogue must manage the aliases, the various
versions and languages of the same source of law as well as the
related manifestations.
It is suggested that each enacting authority implements its own
catalogue, assigning a corresponding unambiguous uniform name to each
resource.
10.3. Suggested Resolver Behaviour
First, the resolver SHOULD separate the part corresponding to the
partition ID, through the "~" separator, from the document name.
The resolution process SHOULD implement a normalization of the
uniform name to be resolved. This may involve transforming some
components to the canonical form (e.g., filling out the acronyms,
expanding the abbreviations, unifying the institution names,
standardizing the type of measures, etc.). For this function
authorities and types of measure registers are useful.
The resolver SHOULD then query the catalogue searching for the URN
which corresponds exactly to the given one (normalized if necessary).
Since the names coming from the references may be inaccurate or
incomplete, an iterative, heuristic approach (based on partial
matches) is indicated. Incomplete references (not including all the
elements to create the canonical uniform name) are normal and
natural; for a human reader, the reference would be "completed" by
contextual understanding of the reference in the document in which it
occurs.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 45]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
In this phase, the resolver should use the partition ID information
to retrieve, if it is possible, only the referred partition,
otherwise to return the entire document.
Lacking more specific indications, the resolver SHOULD select the
best (most recent) version of the requested source of law, and
provide all the manifestations with their related items. A more
specific indication in the uniform name to be resolved will, of
course, result in a more selective retrieval, based on any suggested
expression and/or manifestations components (e.g. date, language,
format, etc.).
Finally, the resolver SHOULD append to URLs the "#" character
followed by partition ID, transforming it in a URI fragment for
browser pointing.
11. Security Considerations
Security considerations are those normally associated with the use
and resolution URNs in general. Additional security considerations
concerning the authenticity of a document do not pertain to the LEX
specifications, but they pertain security and trust issues which can
be addressed with other means, like digital signature, data
encryption, etc.
12. IANA Considerations
IANA has already registered the "lex" namespace, according to the
template at section 2. Registration has been accomplished as the
Formal URN Namespace registry described by [RFC8141].
In addition, to activate a distributed resolution system, the one-off
registration of the following NAPTR records is requested:
in the URN.ARPA domain:
IN NAPTR 1 0 "" "" "!^urn:lex:!_lex!i" .
_lex IN NAPTR 10 10 "" "" "" lex-nameserver.
in the URN.URI.ARPA domain:
IN NAPTR 1 0 "" "" "!^urn:lex:!_lex!i" .
_lex IN NAPTR 10 10 "" "" "" lex-nameserver.
where lex-nameserver indicates the server of the organization that is
responsible for the resolution of the "lex" namespace and will be
communicated by the applicant when the application is approved.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 46]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
13. Acknowledgements
The authors of this document wish to thank all the supporters for
giving suggestions and comments.
They are also grateful to the Legislative XML community [SART] for
the interesting discussions on this topic and to the Working Group
"Identification of the legal resources through URNs" of Italian
NormeInRete project for the provided guidance [SPIN].
The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Bruce, director of the
Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University Law School, for
his contribution in revising this document and sharing fruitful
discussions which greatly improved the final draft. The authors wish
to specially thank Marc van Opijnen (Dutch Ministry of Security and
Justice) for his valuable comments on LEX specifications which
contributed to improve the final result, as well as for the common
work aimed to harmonize ECLI and LEX specifications. Thanks also to
Joao Alberto de Oliveira Lima, legislative system analyst of the
Brazilian Federal Senate, and to Attila Torcsvari, information
management consultant, for their detailed comments on the first
drafts of this document, which provided significant hints to the
final version of the standard, and to Robert Richards of the Legal
Information Institute (Cornell University Law School), promoter and
maintainer of the Legal Informatics Research social network, as well
as to the members of this network, for their valuable comments on
this proposal.
Finally, many thanks go to Loriana Serrotti who significantly
contributed to the first drafting of this document.
14. References
14.1. Normative References
[RFC2045] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, DOI 10.17487/RFC2045, November 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2045>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, DOI 10.17487/RFC3629, November
2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3629>.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 47]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
[RFC3404] Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS)
Part Four: The Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)",
RFC 3404, DOI 10.17487/RFC3404, October 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3404>.
[RFC3405] Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS)
Part Five: URI.ARPA Assignment Procedures", BCP 65,
RFC 3405, DOI 10.17487/RFC3405, October 2002,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3405>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.
[RFC5646] Phillips, A., Ed. and M. Davis, Ed., "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 5646, DOI 10.17487/RFC5646,
September 2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5646>.
[RFC5891] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names in
Applications (IDNA): Protocol", RFC 5891,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5891, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5891>.
[RFC5893] Alvestrand, H., Ed. and C. Karp, "Right-to-Left Scripts
for Internationalized Domain Names for Applications
(IDNA)", RFC 5893, DOI 10.17487/RFC5893, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5893>.
[RFC5894] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Background, Explanation, and
Rationale", RFC 5894, DOI 10.17487/RFC5894, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5894>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC8141] Saint-Andre, P. and J. Klensin, "Uniform Resource Names
(URNs)", RFC 8141, DOI 10.17487/RFC8141, April 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8141>.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 48]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8288] Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 8288,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8288, October 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8288>.
[ISO.8601.1988]
International Organization for Standardization, "Data
elements and interchange formats - Information interchange
- Representation of dates and times", ISO Standard 8601,
June 1988.
[W3C.HTML] "HTML", W3C REC html, W3C html,
<https://www.w3.org/TR/html/>.
14.2. Informative References
[FRAN] Francesconi, E., "Technologies for European Integration.
Standards-based Interoperability of Legal Information
Systems", ISBN 978-88-8398-050-3, 2007.
[FRBR] "Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records", n.d.,
<https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/frbr/
frbr_2008.pdf>.
[HCPIL] The European Commission, "The Hague Conference on Private
International Law "Access to Foreign Law in Civil and
Commercial Matters. Conclusions and Recommendations"",
2012, <https://assets.hcch.net/docs/b093f152-a4b3-4530-
949e-65c1bfc9cda1.pdf>.
[ISBD] The Standing Committee of the IFLA Cataloguing Section
Berlin/Munich\: De Gruyter Saur, "International Standard
Bibliographic Description - Consolidated Edition.",
ISBN 978-3-11-026379-4, 2011.
[ISO3166-1]
International Organization for Standardization, "Codes for
the representation of names of countries and their
subdivisions -- Part 1: Country codes".
[LVI] Peruginelli, G., Ed. and M. Ragona, Ed., "Law via the
Internet. Free Access, Quality of Information,
Effectiveness of Rights", ISBN 9788883980589, 2008.
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 49]
Internet-Draft URN LEX Namespace for Sources of Law December 2023
[SART] Sartor, G., Palmirani, M., Francesconi, E., and M.
Biasiotti, "Legislative XML for the Semantic Web.
Principles, Models, Standards for Document Management,
Law, Governance and Technology Series",
ISBN 978-94-007-1887-6, 2011.
[SPIN] Spinosa, P., "The Assignment of Uniform Names to Italian
Legal Documents, URN-NIR 1.4", ITTIG technical Report n.
8/2010., June 2020.
[W3C.rdf-schema]
"RDF Schema 1.1", W3C REC rdf-schema, W3C rdf-schema,
<https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/>.
Authors' Addresses
PierLuigi Spinosa
Via Zanardelli, 15
50136 Firenze
Italy
Phone: +39 339 5614056
Email: pierluigi.spinosa@gmail.com
Enrico Franceseconi
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Via de' Barucci, 20
50127 Firenze
Italy
Phone: +39 055 43995
Email: enrico.francesconi@cnr.it
Caterina Lupo
Via San Fabiano, 25
117 Roma
Italy
Phone: +39 3382632348
Email: caterina.lupo@gmail.com
Spinosa, et al. Expires 17 June 2024 [Page 50]
