CHLexML

“CHLexML is a XML schema developed by the SVRI. This XML schema expressly addresses the
need for a structured and harmonized data format to store legal acts in Switzerland. CHLexML
proves that this need was correctly recognized in Switzerland. However, it is not known whether it
is already in use or will be in use in a near future. Moreover, the existing 1.0 version could still be
improved in order to include metadata about the creation of legal acts.”(1)

“In Switzerland, the SVRI has launched the CHLexML project to create
a common data model for all Swiss legislation acts. According to the project’s website, different official participants were involved in the creation process, namely the offices
of the federal administration as well as several Swiss cantons. After a Swiss wide consultation
procedure and a practical test in the canton of Uri, the 1.0 version of the CHLexML schema is now
available and can be freely used at no cost.”(2 diuf)

Features

“… the sole creation of a common XML schema for legal acts in Switzerland is very
positive. It proves that the need for structured legal texts has been recognized and properly
addressed. The existence of CHLexML paves the way for a new generation of online legislation
databases based on structured XML documents.

Secondly, it is very important that the CHLexML project has received a Swiss wide support from
many different authorities. This means that the idea of a data structure common to all Swiss
legislation databases is already familiar to the federal and cantonal administrations. Therefore, the
actual implementation of CHLexML by all legislation databases might be expected in a reasonable
future.

Finally, the CHLexML schema implements most of the technical features required to offer the users
new, advanced features. The most important technical aspect is the implementation of the time
aspect: CHLexML data file can contain two types of changes, new editions and new versions,
depending on how important the change was. It is however not yet clear how this possibility will be
used in practice to offer new time related functionalities.”(3 diuf)

Weaknesses

“Even though the CHLexML project seem to be successful, it is nevertheless possible to point out
some minor issues that remain to be solved. Firstly, no official declaration exists on the future
practical use of CHLexML. An official statement (even a non binding declaration of interest of all
the concerned administrations) would definitely be welcome, as it would give a strong signal and
help impose CHLexML as a valid standard.

Moreover, no information is provided whether the CHLexML data schema is already in use or
whether it is in the process of implementation in a legal IT project. Such information might be
helpful, as it could prove its functionality or provide useful suggestions on the future improvements.
Lastly, the CHLexML section concerning the metadata of a legal act could definitely be expanded
to include more useful information. As for the version 1.0, CHLexML does not include any
metadata providing information about the entire creation process of a legal act. This is a serious
drawback, as it does not allow to store all the data from the creation procedure of an act in a single
place. Without this feature, it would be for example very difficult to integrate the available data from
different publication databases on the federal level. Moreover, with no such metadata it would be
impossible to provide a complete overview of the whole creation procedure of a legal act.
Improvement proposition.”(4 diuf) In this case, it is only necessary to include the relevant metadata.

Review

“The activities on standardisation in legal domain, with particular attention to multilingual
issues in the Swiss Confederation, are coordinated by COPIUR “Coordination Office for the Electronic Publication of Legal Data Federal Office of Justice” in Bern, Switzerland (5).

Copiur started its work in October 1998. Initially attached to the Federal
Chancellery, it later joined the Service of “Legal Data Processing and Computer
Law” (6) at the Federal Office of Justice.

The Service initiates and leads informatics and organizational projects of national importance in areas like registers, electronic exchange of legal documents and electronic publication of legislative data. Copiur evaluates and promotes new information technologies in the legislative field. It deals principally with the elaboration of uniform norms, standards, and information structures. Its principal objective is to harmonize federal, cantonal as well as private sector publications, in order to
give the public a rich, uniformly presented and simply accessible online-offer of legislative
data. Copiur also represents the federal administration at the appropriate national and international coordination bodies.

COPIUR currently deals with two relevant projects.

The first one is CHLexML (7), or the establishment of a comprehensive XML schema to be used for the publication of all (federal, cantonal and even communal) legislative acts. The schema has been finalised by a working group of the Swiss association for juridical informatics led by Copiur and the Federal Chancellery. After an internal review, it will be adopted at the 5th seminar on law and
informatics organised by Copiur on 30 June 1st July 2005. The schema CHLexML will then be submitted to cantonal chancelleries and other interested players for consultation and to the eCH (the E-Government standards setting association) for normalisation.

The second project is named LexGo (8). Its main purpose is to align the 27 classification systems (all different) used by the 27 (federal and cantonal) systematic collections of law in order to simplify and improve search results.

Based on the common systematic for the classification of legal acts elaborated by the Institute of Federalism of Fribourg, LexGo has created 27 matrix tables (9) aligning all cantonal and federal legislative acts to the common systematic. Thanks also to a database of accurate links, LexGo allows users to find, for example, all federal and cantonal norms related to a given subject.”(10)

Resources

Notes and References

1. ONLINE LEGISLATION DATABASES IN SWITZERLAND, Blazej Blazejewski, 2010
2. Idem 1
3. Idem 1
4. Idem 1
5. rechtsinformation.admin.ch/copiur/index.html
6. Rechtsinformatik und Informatikrecht/Informatique juridique, droit et informatique/
   Informatica giuridica, diritto dell’informatica
7. chlexml.ch
8. lexgo.ch
9. Konkordanztabellen, tableaux de concordance
10. XML format(s) for legal Sources, Estrella Deliverable 3.1, Caterina Lupo et al. (2007)

See Also

• Semantic Web and Law
• Semantic Indexing and Law
• XML Standards for Legislation
• MetaLex
• LegalXML
• SDU BWB
• Linked Data Principles to Legal Information
• LexDania
• NormeinRete
• AKOMA NTOSO
• EnAct
• Legal RDF
• eLaw
• LAMS
• JSMS
• UKMF
• Estrella Project
• Legal Ontologies
• Artificial Intelligence and Law
• CELEX
• Free Access to Law Movement
• Legal Information Institute resources

Further Reading

• Marchetti A., Megale F., Seta E., Vitali F., “Using XML as a means to access legislative documents: Italian and foreign experiences” , ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review, 10, n. 1, pp. 54-62 (2002)
• Vitali F., Di Iorio A., Gubellini D., Design patterns for document substructures, Extreme Markup 2005 Conference, Montreal, 1-5 August 2005, mulberrytech.com/Extreme/Proceedings/xslfo-pdf/2005/ Vitali01/EML2005Vitali01.pdf
• Vitali F., Zeni F., Working Towards Interoperability in African Parliamentary Information Systems, IST-Africa 2006 Conference Proceedings, Paul Cunningham and Miriam Cunningham (Eds). IIMC International Information Management Corporation, 2006,
• XML Patterns: xmlpatterns.com
• Gordon, T.F.: Constructing Legal Arguments with Rules in the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF). Computable Models of the Law: Languages, Dialogues, Games, Ontologies pp. 162 184 (2008)
• IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Functional requirements for bibliographic records: nal report. K . G. Saur (1998)
• Kay, M.: XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0. Recommendation, W3C (Jan 2007), https://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-xslt20-20070123/. Latest version available at w3.org/TR/xslt20
• de Oliveira Lima, A., Palmirani, M., Vitali, F.: Moving in the Time: An Ontology for Identifying Legal Resources. Computable Models of the Law, Languages, Dialogues, Games, Ontologies pp. 71 85 (2008)
• Palmirani, M., Benigni, F.: Norma-System: A Legal Information System for Managing Time. In: V Legislative XML Workshop. pp. 205 224 (2007)
• Palmirani, M., Contissa, G., Rubino, R.: Fill the gap in the legal knowledge modelling. In: proceeding of RuleML 2009. pp. 305 314 (2009)
• Presutti, V., Gangemi, A.: Content ontology design patterns as practical building blocks for web ontologies. In: ER2008. Barcelona, Spain. (2008)
• Valentina Presutti et al.: A Library of Ontology Design Patterns. NeOn project deliverable D2.5.1. (2008)
• Biagioli, C. and Francesconi, E. (2005). A semantics-based visual framework for planning a new bill. In Proceedings of the Jurix Conference: Legal Knowledge and Information Systems.
• Jérôme Fuselier et Boris Chidlovskii, Traitements Automatiques pour la Migration de Documents Numériques vers XML, in Document Numérique, vol 9/1 -2006.
• Ovidiu Vasutiu, David Jouve, Youssef Amghar, Jean-Marie Pinon, XML based Legal Document Drafting Information System, 20th Aniversary Annual JURIX Conference, Workshop on Legislative XML, LIRIS, 12/2007
• Data models for version management of legislative documents, Marà­a Hallo Carrasco,
  Journal of Information Science.
• V. R. Benjamins, P. Casanovas, J. Breuker, and A. Gangemi, editors. Law and the Semantic
  Web: Legal Ontologies, Methodologies, Legal Information Retrieval and Applications.
  Springer-Verlag, 2005.
• C. Lupo and C. Batini. A federative approach to laws access by citizens: The Normeinrete system. In R. Traunmuller, editor, Proc. Second International Conference on Electronic
  Government, Berlin, 2003. Springer.
• Thomas F. Gordon, Guido Governatori, and Antonino Rotolo. Rules and norms: Requirements for rule interchange languages in the legal domain. In Guido Governatori, John Hall, and Adrian Paschke, editors, Rule Representation, Interchange and Reasoning on the Web, LNCS 5858, pages 282-296. Springer, 2009.
• Long-term preservation of legal resources, Gioele Barabucci et al.
• Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective, Kim Normann Andersen, ?Enrico Francesconi, ?Ake Grünlund
• Legislative xml: principles and technical tools (commissioned by the inter-american development bank), Monica Palmirani